Published in Mobiles

Qualcomm announces Quick Charge 4

by on17 November 2016


As we said a week ago

Qualcomm just announced that Snapdragon 835, the world’s first 10nm SoC will support Quick Charge 4. The new charging standard promises 20 percent faster charging and that five-minute charge can give you five hours of Smartphone usage. Fudzilla mentioned Quick Charge 4.0 in details a bit more than a week ago. 

Snapdragon 835 is expected to ship in commercial devices in the first half of 2017 and it will be capable of Quick Charge 4 fast charging.

The fact that Quick Charge can provide five hours of usage after five minutes of working is based on Qualcomm internal testing of a charging a 2750mAh fast charge battery and using the maximum power for a thermal limit of 40C for all charging implementations. The charge time based on 0% to 50% utilizing 2017 charging Implementations and it was tested in September 2016.

Snapdragon 835 is designed to allow devices to support 5 hours of battery life with 5 minutes charging. The company didn’t want to get into details about what percentage of the battery that can charge in 5 minutes or commented about the specifics of the five hours usage.

Quick Charge 4.0 and 3.0 support AICL, APSD, HVDCP++, Dual Charge++ and Quick Charge 4.0 supports INOV (Intelligent Negotiation for Optimum Voltage) 3.0  as well as the improved Battery Saver Technologies 2.0. The Quick Charge 4.0 supports USB-PD Support and has a Cable quality detection. Qualcomm pays a lot of attention that your phone, charger and cables don’t burst in the flames and cheap cables can definitely contribute to some issues. This is why the company came up with cable quality detection. Quick Charge 4.0 has protocol where the charger and the phone talk all the time and decide the voltage and current that is safe to be sent to battery.

Interestingly enough Qualcomm didn’t get into many details including the maximum power than it can send towards the phone.

Using Dual Charge, parallel charging technology, users can get up to 20 percent faster charging and up to 30 percent higher efficiency compared with Quick Charge 3.0. Quick Charge 4 also integrates USB Type-C and USB-PD support, making the industry’s most popular battery charging solution available on the widest variety of cables and adapters.

Alex Katouzian, senior vice president, product management, Qualcomm said:

“As mobile devices become more capable and feature rich, people tend to use them more. That’s why consumer demand and awareness for fast-charging solutions is now at an all-time high. Quick Charge 4 addresses that need by providing up to 50 percent battery charge in roughly 15 minutes or less, so you don’t have to spend all day chained to your charging cable.” 

Quick Charge 4 features the third release of INOV (Intelligent Negotiation for Optimum Voltage), a unique power-management algorithm designed by Qualcomm Technologies. In Quick Charge 3.0 the algoritham was able to provides flexibility with 200mV increments from 3.6V to 20V. INOV now includes real-time thermal management, which is designed to advance charging optimization by automatically determining and selecting the optimal power transfer level for a given thermal condition. The main idea is to prevent battery and device from overheating and damadging. In order to charge your battery faster, you need to be able to monitor these parameters and chose what is the maximum power you can send to the battery.   

Quick Charge 4 comes with advanced safety features for both the adapter and mobile device. Protection is implemented at multiple levels and throughout the entire charging process to more accurately measure voltage, current, and temperature while protecting the battery, system, cables and connectors.

An additional layer of protection is also being added to help prevent battery over-charging and regulate current throughout every charge cycle.

For optimal Quick Charge 4 performance, Qualcomm Technologies is introducing the newest power management ICs (PMIC), SMB1380 and SMB1381. These parts have low impedance, up to 95% peak efficiency, and advanced fast charging features, such as battery differential sensing, SMB1380 and SMB1381 are engineered to provide the fastest battery charging from any 5V USB Type-C or high-voltage power source while supporting ultra-thin mobile devices with a charging solution profile of less than 0.8mm. The SMB1380/1 is expected to be available before the end of 2016. 

Quick Charge ecosystem consists of more than 100 Quick Charge compatible mobile devices and more than 300 unique accessory products such as wall and car adapters, battery packs and docking stations. In total, over 600 million mobile devices and accessories support Quick Charge technology.

Oppo, MediaTek, Samsung, Huawei have their own version of quick charging, as this is one of the most important features for the high end users, they want to charge their phones as quickly as possible. 

Last modified on 17 November 2016
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