Question on Smartphone Battery Charging Technique

I live in a very hot country with ambient temperatures reaching upto 45C. Now my smartphone has 27W charging, but however it gets very hot especially during initial charging (upto 60%). So one day, I decided to charge it on an ice pack (which is used to for muscle pain having blue gel inside it). I put a cloth in between ice pack and phone to absorb any condensation. The result is very good, not only the battery doesn't heat up but it charges lot quicker too. Normally I remove the ice pack once phone reaches 70-80% charge. Yeah I know, I have too much time on my hand, but thanks to covid I can do that :laughing:

I just wanted to know if there are any disadvantage of charging the phone this way apart from condensation which I haven't noticed much due to low RH in my area.

Hello TheMafioso,

Welcome to CPF.

I ran a quick check and it looks like the ice pack may drop the temperature to somewhere around 3C. That is still a decent temperature to charge at so I don't think there will be any electrical issues.

I am not sure how thermal cycling will effect the battery but that is another discussion.

Tom

From what I've read about fast charging they have temperature sensors that limit the current to keep temperatures down below a certain threshhold. I think one disadvantage doing that would be if the temperature sensor is located nearer to the outside of the case and you try to charge it before the temperature normalizes from the ice pack throughout the battery pack you could have the temperature sensor thinking the pack is colder than it is perhaps which would have a hotter pack charging harder then the "healthy" algorithm.
I would suggest if you want to charge this way either start right away or wait awhile after putting the ice pack on it before you start charging as the cold will not immediately change the battery temp itself but shortly may start changing it and there could be uneven "cooling" of the pack which could make the average pack temp not match the optimum charging rate.

SilverFox said:

Hello TheMafioso,

Welcome to CPF.

I ran a quick check and it looks like the ice pack may drop the temperature to somewhere around 3C. That is still a decent temperature to charge at so I don't think there will be any electrical issues.

I am not sure how thermal cycling will effect the battery but that is another discussion.

Tom

Click to expand...

On my phone, there is temperature readout of battery temp during charge. Normally it goes to 42-44C if I don't put ice pack. With Ice pack it reduces to 20C.

Lynx has mentioned a great point. Maybe I should invert the phone while charging, so screen is on pack rather than battery.

TheMafioso said:

On my phone, there is temperature readout of battery temp during charge. Normally it goes to 42-44C if I don't put ice pack. With Ice pack it reduces to 20C.

Lynx has mentioned a great point. Maybe I should invert the phone while charging, so screen is on pack rather than battery.

Click to expand...

I don't think that would help things much getting glass cold and hot could be a little risky as dramatic temperature changes can cause damage to it.

charge it slow and only to about 80%
high temps and high SOC= faster degradation.