I'm fascinated by batteries. The very idea of a battery is interesting: this silent, static object that holds within it power, electricity — light, movement, energy. Batteries, especially rechargeable ones, are fascinating because they are both simple — stored energy released as components need them, and then filled back up through another source — and incredibly complex. The very makeup of today's modern lithium-ion battery is something to behold, and requires a considerable amount of engineering prowess to install safely into a product like a phone. I'm thinking about batteries this week because of the Galaxy Note 10+, which is the first phone to use the burgeoning and increasingly widely-used USB-PD standard to hit peak charging speeds of 45 watts. To most people, the size of a battery matters more than the speed at which it recharges, but capacity is just one of the three pillars that makes up one's smartphone uptime experience, the other two being discharge rate (the rate at which the components and the operating system consume energy), and recharge rate (the speed at which the battery can fill up again). Samsung doesn't want another Note 7 disaster, which is why it's prioritizing safety as it markets super fast charging. To date, most high-speed charging solutions have used proprietary standards developed by the companies that sell the phone; that way they have more control over how the wall adapter that creates the current, and the cable that carries it, interact with the battery. The two most well-known standards are Huawei's SuperCharge, which reached 40 watts this year with the P30 Pro, and OPPO's Super VOOC, which pushes 50 watts. OnePlus's Warp Charge, an offshoot of OPPO's solution, hit 30W this year with the OnePlus 7 Pro. Of course, there are caveats with all of these solutions. SuperCharge requires a specialized AC adapter and cable, and the charger itself is considerably larger than what you may be used to with older phones from a few years ago that topped out at 10 watts. OPPO's SuperCharge goes even further, dividing the phone's battery itself into two cells so it can accelerate top-up speeds by working independently.

OnePlus's new Warp Charge standard hits 30 watts, topping off the phone at just over an hour.