Does a longer cable take longer to charge a phone or tablet?

I'm going to answer that question, and also answer a question you may not have thought of, such as charging time between thin vs thick cables.

Now, onto my essay.

Yes, longer cables that longer to charge, all things being equal.  The length of the cable matters, though not a great deal at shorter distances.

Which wire charges the fastest?  The shortest cables with the thickest internal power wires charge the fastest.  They have less resistance, and the faster the charging.  To help understand this, think about it in terms of a road.  The wider the road, the more cars that can get through faster.  But, the narrower the road, the fewer cars and more congestion (resistance), the fewer the traffic (charge) can get through.

If you’ve heard of ‘fast charge’, this normally means that power wires are of at least a thickness of 24 gauge.

Why not just use huge wires?  We could, but the problem that we face is that thicker wires tend to be less flexible, and with devices getting smaller and lighter, it can shift them around making it tough to hold, or tough to keep in a cradle.  For example, I have a Galaxy S7 phone with an aftermarket charging adapter.  When I set my phone next to my night stand, a thicker cable (even our standard cable) is tough to manage while I’m reading the news; the thicker wire makes charging bulky and cumbersome.  So, in this instance, an extra-thin wire is my preference, especially since I’m likely going to allow it to charge overnight.  Our ultra-thin wires (which use a super thin 30AWG) will normally charge my phone in about 4 hours when it’s at about 15% battery life left.  However, if I’ve forgotten to charge the phone overnight, in the morning I’ll opt for a thicker wire that would charge faster.  Our normal wires (which are a thicker 24AWG) will normally charge an almost dead phone in less than half that time.

Test Scenario: I purposefully ran my phone down to 10% to give you a real-life scenario of a charging scenario.  Now, one caveat, this only works with devices that are capable of fast charge.  I have 2 tablets, an Amazon Kindle Fire and a Galaxy Tab – neither of these are fast charge, so even on this same fast charge setup, they’re still slow.  Your device must be fast charge capable for this to apply!

For reference, the below chart is my Samsung Galaxy S7, testing 2 cable types: Regular (RR-AMCB-XXG) and Ultra-Thin (RR-AMCB-XXGX).  I also have a second chart that shows the cables along with a charging dock.  The charge time are the approximate charging times that are noted by my phone, about 10 seconds after charging has begun.

The results:

Aftermarket “Anker” charging adapter I bought on Amazon

10% Battery Life
Cable Length	Cable Type	Charge Time
1ft	Regular	1hr 47min
	Ultra-Thin	1hr 54min
4ft	Regular	1hrs 59min
	Ultra-Thin	3hrs 7min
8ft	Regular	2hrs 19min
	Ultra-Thin	4hrs 19min

Generic wireless charging dock that states “Fast Charge”

11% Battery Life
Cable Length	Cable Type	Charge Time
1ft	Regular	3hrs 7min
	Ultra-Thin	3hrs 7min
4ft	Regular	3hrs 7min
	Ultra-Thin	6hrs 14min
8ft	Regular	3hrs 12min
	Ultra-Thin	6hrs 14min

*Some setups are made up of 2 or our cables that are daisy chained together.  I did this as a test scenario in order to ensure I was testing exact lengths.

So, you can easily see, from the chart, how much the different variables correlate to charging times.

Hopefully this helps you make better decisions on cable buying.

One last note, cable ‘thickness’, does not necessarily reflect wire thickness.  We sometimes order different cables from places to see what our competition is doing.  We have noticed that some use a thicker ‘jacket’ to give a thicker appearance, but still use thinner wires inside.  So as they say, buyer beware!

Side Note: The longer length of the ultra-thin ended up being really handy if I wanted to set my tablet up in the bed and charge something without a cable bothering me.  For that, it worked like a champ.  Today is July 27, 2018; and we will likely now build a longer ultra-thin cable for charging just for that purpose.  If you have any ideas that you think might be interesting to see tested, let us know.  We thrive on customer feedback.