Dash Charge is a proprietary solution from OnePlus. Dash Charge produces large electric current rather than increasing the voltage, leading to what OnePlus claims to be stable, consistent charging speeds.
The OnePlus 3 Dash Charge supports 5 volts @ 4 amps.
We observed that the OnePlus 3, once plugged into the charger, charges at 1.6 A and takes around 83 seconds to reach a stabilized current of 3.7 A.
Here we have monitored the current and voltage levels at different stages of battery charging by using a current probe and oscilloscope.
While charging the battery at 0% charge, we can observe from the oscilloscope screenshot that the voltage is 5.1 V and maximum current is 1.6 A.
When the battery is at 10% charge, we can see in oscilloscope screenshot that voltage is 4.3 V and maximum current has increased to 3.7 A
When the battery is at 20% charge, we can see in oscilloscope screenshot that again voltage is 4.3 V and maximum current is 3.7 A
When the battery is at 30% charge, we can see in oscilloscope screenshot that nothing changes with voltage is 4.3 V and maximum current is 3.7 A
When the battery is at 50% charge, we can see in oscilloscope screenshot that still nothing changes with voltage is 4.3 V and maximum current is 3.7 A.
When the battery is at 60% charge, we can see in oscilloscope screenshot that voltage is 4.3 V and maximum current starts dropping to 3.6 A.
When the battery is at 70% charge, we can see in oscilloscope screenshot that voltage has risen slightly to 4.5 V and current is still 3.6 A
When the battery is at 80% charge, we can see in oscilloscope screenshot that voltage is still 4.5 V while current has decreased to 2.0 A
When the battery is at 90% charge, we can see in oscilloscope screenshot that voltage has gone up further to 5.1 V and while current has decreased to 1.1 A
The screenshot below shows the voltage at 5.1 V and current at .6 A when the battery is fully charged.
The OnePlus 3 takes around 30 minutes to reach 60% using its Dash charger (5 V, 4 A).
The following graph shows how the OnePlus 3 draws different amount of current as the battery charges from 0 to 100%
The next graph below gives us a clearer picture about how long it takes to charge from 0 to 100%. With the Dash Charge adapter, it takes 1 hour 7 minutes to charge the OnePlus 3 completely while the phone is powered on which is extremely fast.