Charging
Why your phone charges slowly (and what to check first)
Slow charging has four usual causes, and they're easy to tell apart if you test them in the right order: the cable, the charger, the port, then the battery. Five minutes of checking saves you buying the wrong thing.
Start with the cable
Cables fail far more often than phones do, and they fail gradually — the fine wires inside break near the plug from being bent, and charging gets slower before it stops. Borrow a cable you know is good and try it. If everything is suddenly fast again, you're done, and it cost you nothing.
Look at the plug too: bent, blackened or corroded pins mean that cable has been damaged, and a damaged plug will chew up your phone's port as well.
Then the charger itself
The brick decides how much power your phone is allowed to draw. An old 5W plug, a laptop USB port or a car socket will all charge a modern phone at a crawl, and that's normal rather than a fault. Fast charging needs a charger that can supply it — and, on most phones, a USB-C cable rated for it.
Cheap no-name chargers are the other half of this. They often deliver less than they claim, run hot, and put electrical noise into the phone, which is a common cause of touch playing up while charging.
Then the port — the one people never suspect
Your charging port is an open slot that lives in a pocket. Lint compacts in the bottom of it, layer by layer, until the plug can't seat fully. The tell-tale signs:
- You have to hold the cable at a particular angle, or prop something against it.
- The plug doesn't click in as deeply as it used to.
- It charges on the desk but stops the moment the phone is picked up.
- It charges fine on a wireless pad, but slowly or not at all on a cable — that one is close to proof.
Most of the time a packed port only needs cleaning out properly, not replacing. If you try it yourself, use a wooden toothpick with the phone switched off, and never anything metal — a slipped pin bridges two contacts and turns a five-minute clean into a board repair. If in doubt, bring it in and we'll clear it out on the spot.
Where the port itself is worn, bent or corroded (common after a spill, or after months of a wobbly cable), a charging port replacement starts from $69.
Then the battery
If a good cable and a good charger in a clean port still charge slowly, look at the battery. A worn cell charges more slowly and less predictably: it races to 60% and then crawls, stalls at a percentage for ages, or reaches 100% and drops fast the moment you unplug. Combine that with a phone that's two or three years old and the answer is usually a $59 battery.
Three things that look like faults but aren't
- Charging pauses at 80%. Optimised or adaptive charging deliberately holds at 80% and finishes just before your usual alarm. It's protecting the battery, and you can turn it off in Settings if you'd rather not have it.
- The last 20% is slow. Every phone slows down as it fills; the fast part is the first half. That's chemistry, not a fault.
- It slows down when hot. Charging in the sun, in a car mount or under a thick case makes the phone throttle charging to protect the cell. Take the case off and move it somewhere cool.
When to stop and bring it in
Get it looked at if the phone or charger gets hot enough to be uncomfortable, if it charges only intermittently, if it won't charge above a certain percentage, or if it stopped charging properly after a spill. Charging faults that are ignored have a habit of becoming "the phone won't turn on at all" a week later.
Book a charging repair 0485 811 850