OnePlus Optimized Charging Will Slow Down Charging To Save Your Battery

Almost all smartphones these days now have some form of fast charging tech or another but despite the amazing advances in that area, the painful truth is that batteries themselves have remained the same for the past years. Fast charging technologies may only take minutes to fully charge to full but usually at the expense of battery health. That's why OnePlus has developed what is practically the reverse of its DASH Charge that slows charging down when you leave the phone plugged in overnight.

Since batteries themselves have not changed at all in terms of chemical substances, the only way to charge a battery fast is to increase either the voltage or, in OnePlus' case, the current that comes from the charger. While now generally safe, fast charging can lead to faster degradation of the battery cells, especially when left plugged in at 100%.

That's where OnePlus' Optimized Charging comes in. When fast charging (via DASH Charge, of course) at night time, it will stop at 80% and then slowly trickle to 100%. What makes it different from standard features like that is that it calculates how much time and current is needed to make sure that it only hits 100% when the user is just about to wake up. This is so that the phone is ready for use at once while not overcharging for a prolonged period.

Optimized Charging will use one of three pieces of data to determine when to hit that 100% mark. Either it will use your first alarm or your first event but if neither of those exists, it will use your daily wake up time instead. Of course, this means that it will have to learn your habits over time.

This means that OnePlus' Optimized Charging isn't automatic and you'll have to enable it first and let it learn over time. In case you want to immediately charge your phone to 100%, you can turn it off from its notification. The feature is currently only available on OnePlus 7 phones using a beta version of OxygenOS and there is no word if it'll trickle down to older models as well.