Over the years, fast-charging technology has become a boon for smartphone users. We have enjoyed having 18W Quick Charge support on our phones in the past but are now craving for faster charging speeds. Realme and Oppo already offer 65W SuperVOOC charging and are working towards enabling 125W charging speeds in future devices. Even Xiaomi and Vivo has shown off their 100W charging solutions over the past few months.
Well, this leads to the creation of a slew of proprietary charging technologies but the renowned American chipmaker Qualcomm finally has a solution — Quick Charge 5.
Qualcomm has announced Quick Charge 5 as the world’s first commercially viable fast charging platform to support more than 100W charging power on a smartphone. It’s a successor to Quick Charge 4.0/4+ and brings massive gains in the charging speed and time department.
As per Qualcomm’s claims, Quick Charge 5 will enable you to charge a phone with a 4,500mAh battery from 0% to 50% in just 5 minutes. Yeah, just 5 minutes to fill half the battery and less than 15 minutes to fully charge the phone. This is somewhat similar to what we have already seen with Oppo’s 125W Super Flash Charge solution.
The charging speed here is up to four times faster than Quick Charge 4 that’s supported by most phones these days. Quick Charge 5 technology is also up to 70 percent more efficient than its predecessor and offers 10 times power delivery as compared to the first-gen Quick Charge technology.
How Does Quick Charge 5 Work?
The faster charging speed has been made possible by support for 2S batteries and 20V power delivery. This means you will soon see two battery packs (connected in series) inside most phones over the coming months – enabling two the voltage, thus, twice the charging speed.
Even though the charging voltage is higher, Qualcomm says that Quick Charge 5 runs 10-degrees Celsius cooler than Quick Charge 4. Of course, there are separate voltage, current, and temperature protections in place too.
Quick Charge 5 is optimized to take advantage of both USB-PD and Type-C technologies, offering 100W capabilities in the same footprint as a 45W accessory.
This technology is backed by Qualcomm’s Battery Saver and Smart Identification of Adapter Capabilities standard to further extend the battery life of your smartphone. Quick Charge 5 is backward compatible with Quick Charge 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 4.0+, and existing devices on the market.
The chipmaker has also announced its new next-gen power management ICs (PMIC), Qualcomm SMB1396 and SMB1398. They are engineered to provide 98% efficiency, support both wired and wireless input, more than 20V input voltage, and more for a speedier charging experience.
When Will See Quick Charge 5 Phones in Market?
Many flagship phone owners will be elated to know that Snapdragon 865 and 865+ already support Quick Charge 5 technology. All future premium- and high-tier chipsets from Qualcomm will also arrive with this technology in tow.
Currently, the chipmaker is testing this charging solution and we should expect it to appear in commercial devices in Q3 2020 – i.e. sometime later this year.
