However, if you buy an Apple phone, I bet you’ve got more than one charger for it. Probably one for the car, another in the office and a couple scattered around the house, ready for when the phone needs a quick boost.
But laptops, no, they’ll just stay in the bag with the computer all the time.
However, this means that when you’re travelling, you haul the huge laptop charger along with you for the ride, meaning a bag bulging with chargers to cover all the tech you currently own.
But gallium nitride chargers, or “GaN”, will change all of that.
Gallium nitride allows for much faster, smaller and compact chargers. It’s the new wonder material that will make silicon obsolete and lead to chargers you can carry in your pocket that will quickly charge your laptop, or phone, or camera. Or all of them at once.
The days of carrying around multiple massive chargers to ensure you can stay in touch with work when on the road are gone.
Charge everything in 30 minutes
Many mobile phones now come with the USB-C PD (power delivery) as standard, but not all are as powerful as some of the new generation of fast chargers being released by companies like Aukey, Anker and Belkin.
They’re also not as versatile
Let’s face it; your average mobile phone company isn’t going to be interested in how you charge all your other devices, they just want you to have something that you can top-up your phone with overnight.
This means the charger they supply will be limited in functionality and of relatively low power.
What if you want more? What if you also want to charge your laptop, other phones or even your camera? Maybe you bought the new Samsung S20 and want to get the fastest possible charger for it?
There are some incredible chargers now being manufactured that solve all of these problems and when you get your next phone you’ll probably not even unpack the adapter that comes with it.
If you just want to charge your phone quickly, then a 45W or even 65W small charger will do the trick. It’ll probably charge your phone and someone else’s at the same time much faster than the one you got with your phone.
Need to charge your new MacBook, watch or laptop at the same time? Go for one of the new range of 100W adapters such as the HyperJuice or SlimQ.
Suddenly, there’s a choice, and this will push more and more manufacturers to adopt USB-C, PD and GaN as a standard.
Simplify your life
If you’re anything like most people, you have a drawer or even a large tub absolutely chock-full of chargers and adapters for phones you no longer have.
Thinking that one day the charger will come in useful when you buy the next brand, or even just upgrade within the same brand of phone, you’ve kept them, only to find you need a completely new one every time.
Also, the new one comes with the new phone, so they just pile up, mostly unused, mostly unusable ever again. They then just get thrown away to end up as electrical waste to (hopefully) be recycled, but maybe just put into landfill.
This situation cannot continue, and governments are starting to listen and make changes that will force manufacturers to adopt a standard that can be used by multiple devices.
There will be many benefits to this change. Not only will charging become faster, but chargers will also be smaller, and we’ll need fewer of them.
If manufacturers make the most of this new wave of technology, they can be a part of the solution to one of the biggest problems facing the traveller, the commuter and anyone that has to carry technology around with them.
But more than that, it can provide a solution to the constant cycle of producing devices that are obsolete almost as soon as they’re launched. A Lenovo fast charger will finally be able to charger everything else in your backpack.
This is undoubtedly a benefit to everyone.