Yeah, that’s why I mentioned wirelessly charging. It generates heat regardless of charger quality. You and I both know that Belkin is good, yet it isn’t enough to prevent your wife’s 15PM from dropping to unacceptable levels. The plate being too hot to touch half an hour later is ludicrous - 5w chargers that heat up are good to go in a few minutes (it has happened to me, though not to the extreme you mentioned earlier). The new battery should perform more normally, even with a fast charger.
Now, the question is… (obviously assuming no fires, of course) what can the consequence of the 5w charger outputting 7-8w be? Can that performance over-capacity do something to the phone, assuming the charger is “strained” but still functioning normally? Apple stated until they sold it, iirc, that it was compatible with every iPhone. Or is it just efficiency loss and in spite of the yellowing it should be “fine”? (Even though it is obviously not performing as intended. I really don’t think yellowing due to heat is expected behaviour).
I just unplugged my 16 Plus, but it is at 100% so it is trickle charging. I’ll touch the Power Adapter next time I charge it from below 80%.
This is something I wonder, too: slower (arguably cooler, in spite of the brick itself) charging for longer, or faster (but not too fast and not too hot, like wireless) charging with more heat but a shorter time charging? Say, like I charge once every year or so, a 20w.
Which of those two options is better?
I am inclined to say that they are the same: after all, even with no scientific test, people have shared results left and right; unlike wireless charging which kills health pretty predictably, neither the 5w or the 20w Power Adapters seem to have a negative result.
The comparison between adapters seems, like you said, luck of the draw.
Yeah, that is pretty much my conundrum. I’ve used the 5w for years on end with no negative results. Should strong evidence arise and conclusively prove that the 20w is better than the 5w for every usage pattern, I’ll gladly switch - after all, were that to be the case, then it would be all benefit: faster charging, no heat, and no health degradation more than that for which my usage pattern is responsible.
So I think the conclusion is very simple: use a 5w if it doesn’t get ridiculously hot; otherwise use a 20w. Regardless of your selection, avoid wireless charging and heat, and your device will probably be completely fine.
Some family members cycle their devices a lot more than me. They’ve charged overnight with a 5w regardless of percentage, and the devices are fine. I’m using an iPhone 8 (which, as I dislike breaking tradition I just keep charging with the 5w). 2261 cycles. 76% health. iOS 14. The device is completely fine.
Had it been charged with a wireless charger, the battery would probably be gone. Perhaps even not updating would not be enough to counteract the massive battery failure.
I would not know, because I haven’t degraded an original device enough to know whether a really low health degrades battery life.
Funnily enough… I have a device with battery failure. A family member’s iPhone 6s on iOS 10. It dropped below 80% after one year and 300 cycles. As my motto is “who cares about battery health and replacements, anyway?”, I have it after my family stopped using it. It shows anywhere between 60 and 70% health today. The battery “failed” eight years ago.
Battery life is like-new. 7-8 hours of light SOT, 6 hours of light cellular. It failed eight years ago. I can’t give a better reason for why I don’t care about health than that one.
