With Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 5.0, upcoming phones will be able to get from an empty battery to 50 percent in just five minutes, which is ten times faster than the first generation of Quick Charge technology.
Qualcomm announced the latest iteration of its fast charging tech called Quick Charge 5, offering the most significant improvements ever achieved in one generation since Quick Charge 1.0 in 2013.
The new implementation is 70 percent more efficient than Quick Charge 4 and supports a wide range of input voltages between 3.3V to 20V, and currents of up to 5A. Qualcomm says that using the right cable with a phone that supports Quick Charge 5.0 will allow more than 100W of power to be delivered to the charging circuitry inside your device.
The key, touted capability is charging a 4,500mAh battery from 0 to 50% in five minutes, with a full top-up in 15 minutes. Compared to Quick Charge 4, it’s 70% more power efficient, or four times faster. That’s 10x more power delivery compared to its inaugural fast charging tech from 2013.
There is support for 2S (stacked) batteries and 20 Volts of power delivery. The company is releasing new power management ICs with the Qualcomm SMB1396 and SMB1398. With that amount of power running, there are a number of “extreme safety measures.”
Quick Charge 5 incorporates 12 separate voltage, current and temperature protections, including USB-input overvoltage protection at 25V and external power controls beyond 30V. It also runs 10 degrees Celsius cooler than Quick Charge 4.
A key measure is Qualcomm’s new “Smart Identification of Adapter Capabilities.” This will monitor and verify the actual — instead of just trusting limits of a connected charger to adjust current, power, and voltage behavior. There are also various levels of protection in regards to voltage, current, thermal, and timer at the handset-level.
Quick Charge 5 is supported by the Snapdragon 865 and 865 Plus, as well as “future premium-and high-tier Snapdragon mobile platforms.” Xiaomi will be one of the first partners to leverage the technology in the coming months.
