By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes for Hardware 2.0
I've had my iPhone 8 Plus for a little over a fortnight now, and amidst all the new features and functions, there's one feature that's head and shoulders above everything else.
That feature is fast charging. Seems like a simple feature, but it's revolutionised the way that I use my iPhone.
The battery has always been the iPhone's biggest weakness. Partly that's down to Apple wanting to make the iPhone as thin as possible, but given that our smartphones are something that we have with us 24/7/365, and how much we use it for work and entertainment, I don't think that battery life could be raised to a point where it wouldn't be a problem.
But fast charging has changed all that. In fact, it's changed how I use my iPhone.
My iPhone used to spend a lot of time on charge. Between the charger in the office, the charger in my living room, the charger in the gym, the charger in my bedroom, and the charging cradle in the car, it amounted to many hours a day (and that excludes the sneaky recharges I'd have to give it from my powerbank every so often).
Now that's all changed. When I get in the office in the morning I hook my iPhone up to the USB-C fast charger and give it about 30 minutes to a hour, depending on how busy I am and whether I need to use it, by which point it's pretty close to being fully charged, if not at 100 percent. From that point on I toss it on the wireless charger to keep it topped up.
Normally, that's enough to keep my iPhone going all day. And that's despite the fact that under iOS 11, iPhone battery life is pretty terrible.
If I'm out and about I can also make use of fast charging using my Power Delivery compatible power bank (such as the Anker PowerCore+ 20100 USB-C powerbank), which is just as fast as hooking it up to a main-powered fast charger.
It's a real shame that most owners will never get to experience fast charging. Apple bundled a standard charger and cable with the new iPhone, which means that to make use of fast charging owners will need Apple's crazy-expensive $25 USB-C to Lightning cable, and a Power Delivery compatible charger.
Apple chose to put profit ahead of convenience.
Most people simply won't make the investment in fast charging hardware (at least not until it becomes mainstream and there are cheaper third-party USB-C to Lightning cables available), and that's a real shame, because it's the iPhone 8's best feature.
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