Qualcomm, the company that makes smartphone chips for most of the phones we use on a daily basis, has announced something that will excite everyone around. This is regarding their latest version of fast charging technology known as Quick Charge.
For those who are unaware regarding Qualcomm and Quick Charge, it is worth noting that Qualcomm does provide a universal fast charging solution along with smartphones that are powered by Snapdragon chips. However, it is another thing that OEMs tend to focus on their proprietary fast-charging solutions such as Dash Charge, Turbo Charge, VOOC charge and so on.
The last iteration of Qualcomm’s Quick Charge was QC 4.0 along with QC 4+ later on but they were slow compared to the competition and Qualcomm is not shy of admitting it. Because Qualcomm has said that QC 5 is up to 70% more efficient than QC 4 while also being 4 times faster at charging.
On top of that, the company claims that QC 5 runs 10 degrees colder to QC 4 devices which were the one major complaint with QC 4-enabled devices. Users said that while OEMs managed to provide fast charging while keeping the phone comparatively less warm, QC 4.0 phones got very hot.
It has been years since QC 4 was introduced and the company seems to have worked on their technology a lot to come up with QC 5. Not just fast, Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 5.0 supports 100W+ charging which promises 50% charge in just 5 minutes and full charge in under 15 minutes.
Qualcomm says they now support dual-charge technology as well as 2S battery too. It is more and more common for manufacturers to bundle two batteries inside their device to double the fast charging speeds. For example, OnePlus’ Dash Charge currently support 30W speeds so if they double the batteries then they can achieve 60W fast charging. This is being done by many OEMs and even OnePlus is said to provide a 65W fast-charging solution in the near future.
The main advantage of getting Qualcomm QC-certified chargers over others is the universal support without the need for a proprietary power brick or cable. At the same time, we are not seeing enough Android phones support Quick Charge and instead provide their proprietary charging solution that comes with the above limitations.
We hope that with QC 5, Qualcomm forces OEMs to provide support for Quick Charge 5 along with proprietary fast charging solutions as well. It is expected that smartphones with support for QC 5 will start shipping from Q3 2020 at least in the US.
