Battery charger with quick charge function. What is Quick Charge in phones?

When using smartphones intensively, and this includes the Internet, music and movies, it always needs to be recharged. One charge for one day is not enough for most phones with this type of use. And this is where so-called fast charging can help a lot.

Fast charging smartphone increases the voltage and current supplied to the battery within acceptable limits to achieve the minimum charge time. The limits for increasing current and voltage are determined by the characteristics of the battery itself and the charging device to obtain maximum safety.

With an increase in screen diagonal and resolution, as well as processor power, the load on the battery has also increased. We no longer have enough conventional charging at 5 volts and 2 amps. With this normal charging, the battery takes at least two hours to charge. Therefore, manufacturers have adopted fast charging technology.

But questions also arose. How harmful is fast charging to batteries? Is it true that this can cause smartphones to explode? What's the difference between Qualcomm Quick Charge and MediaTek Pump Express, and which is better? How does fast charging actually work?

Today there are several fast charging standards. Many brands in the smartphone market are trying to create their own standard, both well-known and unknown Chinese companies.

Huawei has its own super charge with a maximum power of 22 Watts, Asus Bust Master allows you to charge devices at a voltage of 9 volts and a current of 2 amperes, Samsung have developed a similar Adaptive Fast Charging technology that can produce 5 or 9 volts and a current of 2 or 1.67 amperes, respectively.

How fast charging works

Any fast charging is based on the principle of increasing the current power transferred to the batteries. But the increase in power in each of these technologies is achieved differently. This can be an increase in voltage up to 20 volts, and in some places they increase the current strength to 5-6 amperes, and someone combines these methods and increases both the voltage and the current strength. Let us recall that electrical power can be determined by multiplying the voltage value in volts by the current in amperes, P=U∙I.

All fast charging technologies include:

• smart controller, most often it is built into the processor
• a special charger capable of delivering the required current
• powerful cable capable of transmitting high power current

Harm from Fast Charging

Still, the first question is whether fast charging is harmful to the battery. And here the situation is ambiguous. There are a number of studies that prove negative influence fast charging to the battery, but there are also studies that completely refute this.

Modern lithium-ion and lithium polymer batteries it doesn’t matter with what current and voltage they will be charged. If you take a laptop, they have the same lithium-ion batteries, only bigger. But if you look at the parameters of the charger, you will see the current strength is within 4-5 amperes and the voltage is about 20 volts, and the most evil fast charge technologies produce 12 volts and 2-3 amperes, and then only during the first 15-20 minutes, after which they switch to a lower current.

But it is also true that smartphones can explode from fast charging. Heat has the most detrimental effect on the battery; it kills the battery and reduces its capacity.

Overheating is main reason fires and explosions. All modern technologies fast charge are equipped with a huge number of overheating protection systems, but why do more and more photos of burnt-out devices appear on the Internet? Because no system can protect a gadget from the influence of a user who charges the device with whatever and at random.

So never skimp on chargers and cables. Ideally, always charge your smartphone with the original charger and cable, and do not charge a damaged device. If the smartphone case is bent, cracked or broken, then it is better not to take risks and not use such a device at all. Never leave a charging smartphone covered with anything, in a thick case or in a bag.

The second reason gadgets break down is low-quality components or defects.. If you buy a phone for $50, then you don’t have to hope that it’s worth good battery. But top brands also have shortcomings. You can recall the sensational story about.

Technology comparison

Now let's look at 3 promising fast charging technologies. These are Qualcomm Quick Charge, the slightly less common Pump Express from MediaTek and the VOOC Flash Charge technology found only in Oppa devices.

Oppa VOOC Flash Charge

Let's start with Super VOOC Flash Charge. Although this is less common, it is the most interesting, fastest and most careful technology.

On at the moment Oppo has already presented the second version of this technology. It allows you to fully charge a 2500 mAh battery in 15 minutes, and in 5 minutes the battery reserves can be replenished by 45%, while the smartphone is charged with a completely standard voltage of 5 volts.

This voltage allows the battery not to heat up. These results were obtained through the use of special batteries that can withstand current up to 4.5 amperes, which is almost 2 times more than in standard charging. The batteries have eight contacts at once and are divided into several cells, which are charged in parallel. It is said that Oppo transferred the technology to OnePlus, and it tried to develop its own variant of Dash Charge based on VOOC Charge.

MediaTek Pump Express

The next fast charger is Pump Express. It does not depend much on specific batteries and materials from which connectors and cables are made.

The current Pump Express 3.0 charges batteries from 0 to 70% in just 20 minutes. The technology uses a voltage of 3 volts with a current of more than 5 amperes. Using Pump Express, you can charge the battery directly, bypassing intermediate circuits, without affecting the standard built-in charging circuit. But this option is only possible when using a connector USB Type-C because it can greatly reduce energy leakage and reduce heating. There are 20 built-in protection systems to protect against overheating.

The first processor to support Pump Express 3.0 is Helio P20; it is stated that subsequent chipsets will also receive support for this standard.

MediaTek sells its processors in bulk to any smartphone manufacturer, so Pump Express should be found in many MediaTek smartphones, but in practice this is not the case. Why?

Yes, because the processor supports fast charging, but manufacturers do not implement this feature due to the fact that they do not want to develop complicated power circuits for the needs of Pump Express and thereby increase the cost of the device. Perhaps manufacturers fear for the safety of batteries, which are not always made with high quality budget phones. Of the smartphones made by MediaTek, only a few have fast charging technology.

Qualcomm Quick Charge

Qualcomm has achieved the greatest success in the development of fast charging. The development of Quick Charge technology has been going on for 4 generations and has been brought to perfection.

All versions are standard backwards compatible, that is, you can use a version 4 charger with a phone that only supports version 1, in which case charging will switch to Quick Charge 1.0 mode.

The Qualcomm standard is supported by a huge number of smartphone and accessory manufacturers. For example, Samsung retains support for Quick Charge, despite the fact that it has its own developments.

Qualcomm introduced the first version of the standard back in 2013, since then the implementation of Quick Charge has not changed much. Integration into a mobile device occurs via a separate chip or together with a Snapdragon chip ( CPU) and a special adapter that can deliver high power current.

With each new version of the Quick Charge standard, it gets faster, smarter and safer. For example, the first generation could charge devices only at 5 volts and 2-2.5 amperes, the second generation allowed the use increased voltage up to 12 volts, or rather the controller itself chose the required value from three fixed values ​​of 5V/9V/12V with a maximum current of 3 amperes. At the same time, acceptable maximum power The power supply can reach 18 watts. But with such power, problems with heating began to appear acutely and already in next versions standard, engineers paid more attention to protecting the battery from overheating.

The main innovation of Quick Charge 3.0 is not increased speed charging, but the technology's ability to save energy by avoiding excessive heat generation. This approach made it possible to implement new technology INOV, that is, intelligent determination of the desired voltage. Thanks to this innovation, data is exchanged between the charger and the device when there is a request for the required voltage, which can be anything in the range from 3.2 to 20 volts in 0.2 volt increments. Thus, Quick Charge 3.0 allows you to dynamically adjust to the required voltage.

As the battery charges or warms up, the controller gradually reduces the required voltage. This is also why the last 20% takes longer to charge. As a result, charging occurs carefully, the battery does not overheat, and its wear is minimized.

And already last year, devices with support for Quick Charge 4.0 appeared, the technology is implemented in the Snapdragon 835 chip. The new standard adds several degrees of protection against overheating, and has a built-in system for checking cable quality, which will prevent the device from being charged from a low-quality or damaged cable.

But the main novelty in Quick Charge 4.0 will be support USB standard Power Delivery. This is a fast charging technology developed by Google. Perhaps in the future PD will become the basis for unification various standards fast charging, it would be good to use one charge for any standard.

Development of mobile power supplies

What will happen in the future? I would like to believe that all smartphone batteries will be based on Graphene, such batteries will boast the properties of super capacitors, and will take a matter of minutes to charge. They are much cooler than modern lithium- ion batteries, do not lose their capacity even after 2000 charging cycles and have more high density energy storage. Perhaps such batteries will appear in 10 years, and we will switch to them; there are already prototypes.

And there are also developments in the production of microscopic batteries based on radioactive elements. You don’t have to charge them at all, you just need to change them every 2 years, but these are developments of the distant future.

Opening hours modern smartphone- a stumbling block for all manufacturers. You can endlessly increase the chipset power, display resolution, use the coolest camera, but all these advantages do not matter if the device lasts only half a day on charging. An obvious solution is to increase the capacity and quality of batteries, but the first is limited by the smartphone body, and the second by modern technologies.

As a result, companies came up with a third, no less elegant way out of this situation: if you can’t come up with a smartphone that will run on battery power for a week, then you can make it charge so quickly that operating time ceases to play a decisive role.

About technology

The main factor affecting the charging rate of a battery is the current supplied by the power source. The higher the current, the faster your smartphone will charge. However, you cannot endlessly and thoughtlessly increase the current strength, as this will entail the need to adapt the remaining components of the smartphone involved in charging. In addition, increasing the current will increase the heating of the case.

Therefore, Qualcomm decided to charge smartphones not with current, but with a higher voltage. To do this, the power was increased to 10 W, the current was increased to 2 A, and the voltage was 5 V. The charging speed with this approach increased by 40%. In the second generation, Quick Charge learned to use voltages of 9 and 12 V, this made it possible to increase the power to 36 W and slightly increase the charging speed.

The main difference between Quick Charge 3.0 is the significant reduction in heating of the case and charger. This is achieved thanks to Intelligent Negotiation for Optimum Voltage (INOV) technology, which allows you to adjust the voltage in 200 mV steps in the range from 3.6 to 20 V.

A point change in voltage depending on the current battery charge made it possible not to overheat the case, while charging time was further reduced. So, Qualcomm promises to charge the smartphone 80% in 35 minutes. And this completely changes the habits when using a smartphone. Let's talk about this in more detail.

Use cases

Nowadays, most smartphones last one working day without charging with average use. As soon as you switch to a more intensive mode (games, for example, or active web surfing in LTE), this time is perfectly reduced to half a day. And then there are three possible options.

In the first case, you turn on the energy saving mode and try not to touch your smartphone until the evening, which, you see, is not very convenient.

The second option is to use an external battery. In this case, you either need to leave the smartphone alone for an hour or two, or accept the fact that there will be a long wire sticking out of it leading to external battery. A side disadvantage of this solution is the need to carry a “power bank” with you, which also weighs as much as the smartphone itself.

Fast charging is an excellent alternative to the two above scenarios. Finding a free charger for half an hour will not be difficult, especially if you are sitting in a cafe. We connect the smartphone, drink a cup of coffee and get an almost fully charged battery, and then use the phone in everyday mode.

Purchase

But why buy such a charger if, in theory, it should come with your smartphone? Unfortunately, even large manufacturers often skimp on this little detail and put it in a box regular block power supply, although the package says Quick Charge 3.0. But even if a smartphone is equipped with an appropriate charger, it usually lies at home, and you will need another one on the road.

And here the question arises: which power supply to choose? On the one hand, there are expensive solutions from large manufacturers for two thousand and more, and on the contrary, there are cheap offers from various little-known companies. You don’t want to overpay for a brand, but you also don’t want to trust a noname company to charge your smartphone.

A good alternative to both solutions is to choose a well-known Chinese company that has been operating in Russia for a long time, but has affordable prices. For example, power supplies with Quick Charge 3.0 are produced by Ainy, known to many users for its protective glass based on Asahi Glass.

All Ainy accessories are tested and rejected at our warehouse in Shenzhen. Therefore, at a relatively low price (only 800 rubles), they chargers have the quality of large manufacturers.

Conclusion

If your smartphone supports Quick Charge 3.0 fast charging, but did not come with a corresponding power supply, or you want to have another charger for travel, then it makes sense to take a closer look at chargers from Ainy. Getting the opportunity to charge your smartphone by 80% in half an hour for just 800 rubles is a great offer.

Hello, everyone knows why fast charging is needed for smartphones, we constantly consume content, communicate in instant messengers and social networks, and even make phone calls. With the increase in screen diagonal and resolution, the load on the battery has also increased. We no longer have enough 5V 2A. We get mad when smartphones take 2 hours to charge. Therefore, manufacturers have adopted Fast Charge, but many users have many questions about this technology.

For example, how bad is fast charging for a battery? Is it true that smartphones can explode when exposed to increased current? Is there a difference between Mediatek Pump Express and Qualcomm Quick Charge? And how does fast charging actually work? This article answers these and many other questions.

Asus Boost Master

Today there are a huge number of fast charging standards. Even Chinese brands, like Leagoo and Oukitel, are trying to create their own standard. So let's talk about famous brands. Huawei has its own Super Charge with a maximum power of 22.5 W. Asus Boost Master allows you to charge the device at a voltage of 9V with a current of 2A. Samsung has developed a similar Adaptive Fast Charging technology; it can produce a voltage of 5 or 9V and a current of 2 or 1.67A, respectively. The most interesting technologies will be described below, but for now let's look at how fast charging works in general.

Any fast charging is based on very simple principle increasing the current transmitted to the battery. But, the increase in power in each of these technologies is achieved in different ways. Somewhere due to an increase in voltage, up to 20V. And somewhere they increase the current to 5-6A. And somewhere they simply combine raising the voltage and current strength.

All fast charging technologies include a smart controller, most often built into the processor, as well as a special charger capable of delivering the required current. Well, sometimes it's required special cable, which can pass increased current. But main question today, is fast charging harmful to batteries?

To be honest, the situation is not clear-cut. There are a number of studies that prove the negative impact of fast charging on the battery. But there are also studies that completely refute this. Since it is not clear who is right and who is wrong, I suggest you figure it out yourself.

By and large, modern lithium-ion and lithium polymer batteries make absolutely no difference at what current and voltage they will be charged. For example, let’s take the same laptops; they have the same lithium-ion batteries, only larger ones.

Therefore, I think panic is unjustified. But is it true that smartphones can explode due to fast charging? Heat has the most detrimental effect on the battery; it kills the battery and reduces its capacity.

Overheating is the main cause of fires and explosions batteries. All modern Fast Charge technologies are equipped with a huge number of overheating protection systems.

But why do we regularly see more and more photographs of burnt-out devices online? Because no system can protect a gadget from user influence. Which charges the device with whatever and anyhow.

So never skimp on chargers and cables. Always charge your smartphone with the original charger and cable. Do not charge a damaged device. If the smartphone case is bent, cracked or broken, then it is better not to take risks and not use such a device at all. Never leave a charging smartphone under your pillow, in a thick case or in a bag.

The second important reason for gadget breakdowns is low-quality components or defects. If you buy a phone for 50 bucks, then it's foolish to hope that it has a good battery. Most likely, such a battery is made from low-quality materials. But A-brands also have shortcomings. Just remember all the jokes about exploding Samsung Galaxy Note 7.

The best fast charging technology

Well, now, for reinforcement and clarity, let’s look at three of the most promising and interesting, in my opinion, fast charging technologies. These are Quick Charge from Qualcomm, the slightly less common Pump Express from Mediatek, and VOOC Flash Charge technology found only in OPPO devices.

Progressive VOOC Flash Charge from OPPO

Let's start with the less familiar VOOC Flash Charge. Although this is less common, it is the most interesting, fastest and most economical technology. At the moment, OPPO has already presented the second version of this technology. It allows you to fully charge a 2500mAh battery in 15 minutes, and in 5 minutes the battery can be replenished by 45%. At the same time, the smartphone is charged with a completely standard voltage of 5V, which does not heat the battery.

These record results were achieved through the use of special batteries that can withstand current up to 4.5A, which is almost 2 times more than in standard charging. The batteries have 8 contacts at once and are divided into several cells, which are charged in parallel. They say that OPPO transferred the technology and it tried to develop its own version of Dash Charge based on VOOC Flash Charge.

The next fast charger is Mediatek Pump Express. It does not depend much on specific batteries and materials from which connectors and cables are made.

Today's current Pump Express 3.0 technology charges the battery from 0 to 70% in just 20 minutes. The technology uses current from 3V with a power of more than 5A. With Pump Express, you can charge the battery directly, bypassing intermediate circuits and without affecting the standard built-in charging circuit.

But this option is only possible when using the USB Type-C connector, because it can greatly reduce energy leakage and reduce heating. There are 20 built-in protection systems to protect against overheating.

The first processor to support Pump Express 3.0 is the Helio P20. It is stated that subsequent chipsets will also receive support for this standard. Mediatek sells its processors by the carload and, in theory, Pump Express should be found in every Mediateke smartphone, but in practice this is not the case. Because the processor supports fast charging, but the manufacturer does not implement this feature because it does not want to mess with the power supply wiring for the needs of the Pump Express and thereby increase the cost of the device.

Perhaps manufacturers are simply concerned about the safety of batteries, which are not always of high quality. Of the smartphones that support fast charging from Mediatek, we can only remember Ulefone Power, Uhans H5000 and Vernee Apollo Lite.

Qualcomm has achieved the greatest success in the field of fast charging. The development of Quick Charge technology has been going on for four generations and has been brought to perfection. All versions of the standard are backward compatible, that is, you can use a version 4 charger with a phone that only supports version 1.

In this case, the charger will switch to Quick Charge 1.0 mode. The Qualcomm standard is supported by a huge number of smartphone and accessory manufacturers. For example, Samsung retains support for Quick Charge. Despite the fact that it has its own developments.

Qualcomm introduced the first version of the standard back in 2013. Since then, the implementation of Quick Charge has not changed much. Integration into mobile devices occurs via a separate chip or together with a Snapdragon chip and a special adapter that can deliver higher current.

With each new version of the Quick Charge standard, it gets faster, smarter and safer. For example, the first generation could charge devices with a voltage of 5V and a current of 2-2.5A. The second generation allowed the use of increased voltage up to 12V; more precisely, the controller itself selected the required value from three fixed voltages 5, 9 or 12V with a maximum current of 3A.

Moreover, in theory, the maximum power of the power supply can reach 18 watts. But with such power, heating problems began to arise, and in subsequent versions engineers paid attention to protecting the battery from overheating. The main innovation of Quick Charge 3.0 is not the increased charging speed, but the technology's ability to save energy by avoiding excess heat generation.

The implementation of this approach was made possible by the new iKnow technology, that is, the intelligent determination of the optimal voltage. Thanks to it, the charger can “communicate” with the device, asking it for the required voltage, which can be anything in the range from 3.2V to 20V in increments of 200mV.

Thus, Quick Charge 3.0 allows you to dynamically adjust to the required voltage. As the battery charges or the controller warms up, the required amperage gradually decreases.

This is also why the last 20% takes longer to charge. As a result, charging occurs very carefully, the battery does not overheat, and its wear is minimized.

A device with support for Quick Charge 4.0 will hit the market this year. This technology is implemented in the Snapdragon 835 chip. The new standard adds several degrees of protection against overheating. There is a built-in cable quality checking system that will prevent the device from being charged from a low-quality or damaged cable.

Well, that's all we have for today. What does the future hold for us? Of course, I want to believe that all smartphone batteries in the future will be based on graphene. Such batteries will boast the properties of super capacitors. And it will take a few minutes to charge them.

They are much cooler than modern lithium-ion batteries and do not lose their capacity even after 2,000 charging cycles and have a higher energy storage density. Perhaps in the very near future, in 7 or 10 years, we will completely switch to them. Because there are already working prototypes.

But what I personally look forward to most are microscopic batteries based on radioactive elements; they will not need to be charged at all, just replaced with new ones every couple of years. But it will take a very, very long time for this technology to be fully implemented.

Let's move our minds back ten years: they were selling first iPhones, various communicators on Windows Mobile and the first Android smartphones. All of them have batteries with a capacity of 1200-1500 mAh and chargers of ~1 A and 5 V, which made it possible to fully charge the battery in one and a half to two hours. Taking into account the fact that the devices of that time, for the most part, at least lived quietly until the evening, or even lived for more than a day, rarely did anyone complain about for a long time charging.

But time passed, battery capacities began to increase, time battery life- fall, but the chargers remained the same: all this eventually led to the fact that I often had to spend hours next to the outlet, just so that the smartphone would survive until the evening. And, of course, manufacturers began to solve the problem: since it is not possible to increase the capacity of batteries even more, they need to be charged faster - and this is how fast charging standards appeared, which we will talk about today.

USB Battery Charging Revision 1.2

The standard was adopted by the USB consortium back in 2011 - that is, it could be used absolutely free by any manufacturer who equipped their device with a USB port. Moreover, if standard USB 3.0 produced no more than 900 mA at 5 V, then the current increases to 1.5 A - more than one and a half times, which can significantly reduce charging time.

In fact, it did not gain much popularity: often such a powerful USB port was only available in top-end motherboards ah and laptops, and it was usually marked in red or with a lightning icon:

Alas, smartphone manufacturers still continued to include 1 A and 5 V chargers in the kit, that is, chargers with Battery Charging 1.2 had to be purchased separately. But, in any case, this made it possible to charge devices significantly faster without harming them.

Qualcomm Quick Charge 1.0-2.0

Perhaps the most famous fast charging standard, announced by Qualcomm in 2013. Version 1.0 supported only the Snapdragon 600 chipset. The voltage also remained standard for USB - 5 volts, but the current was raised to 2 A - that is, another third more than BC 1.2. The first version of this standard was not particularly widespread, so there is no point in dwelling on it for long.

QC 2.0 was the first truly popular fast charging standard. It worked with devices based on Snapdragon 200, 208, 210, 212, 400, 410, 412, 415, 425, 610, 615, 616, 800, 801, 805, 808 and 810. The main difference from previous standards is that the current stopped increasing, which is now limited to 2 A, but the voltage can increase up to 12 V. The reason for this is trivial: the vast majority of USB-microUSB cables existing at that time supported a current of no more than 2.4 A, otherwise they could begin to overheat, which was already dangerous ( as we know, heat losses are proportional to the current strength and the square of the resistance). Therefore, Qualcomm took a different route - they simply started raising the voltage, and as a result, the maximum power is now 18 W (12 V and 1.67 A) versus 10 W (5 V and 2 A) for the first QC version.


Of course, to regulate the voltage, special controllers were now used, which were supposed to be both in the charger and in the smartphone itself. They “communicated” with each other using the D+/D- contacts in the USB port, and the smartphone selected the required voltage and current. If the charger did not support QC (that is, did not respond to a special voltage on the D+/D- contacts), then charging was carried out with a standard current of 1 A at a voltage of 5 V.

Alas, with the release of QC 2.0 the first problems began to arise: due to quite high power At 18 W, the batteries began to overheat, which negatively affected their service life. Of course, the standard included a safe temperature range, beyond which fast charging would turn off, but manufacturers often turned a blind eye to this so that marketers could please users with slogans like “80% in an hour.”

Things got even worse with the release of the hot Snapdragon 810: given that when connected to Android charging often increases background activity (for example, programs are updated), which warms up the CPU, plus the battery also heats up from fast charging - as a result, users are massively faced with the rapid degradation of batteries and the death of motherboards from overheating. This happened especially often to owners of LG G4, Nexus 5x and Flex. The company, in response to complaints, recommended using fast charging only when it is needed, and charging it with regular slow charging at night - obviously, users did not appreciate this answer and filed a class action lawsuit against LG.

Qualcomm itself does not name the charging time - it just says that it is now 75% faster than with QC 1.0. Independent tests show that a smartphone with a ~3000 mAh battery can be charged to 50% using QC 2.0 in about 40 minutes.

USB Power Delivery

In 2015, devices with USB-C began to appear en masse. Since this protocol can contain many different others, manufacturers often began to settle on USB 2.0 or 3.0 - accordingly, there were no problems with supporting QC 2.0.

But then things got more interesting - the USB consortium is creating Type-C standard 1.2, which supports a current of 3 A at a voltage of 5 V: for example, this is exactly the fast charging that the Lumia 950 and 950XL smartphones had. It would seem that everything is great, there shouldn’t be any problems with QC: but no, such cables inside have a special control chip that can only operate at 5 V, and QC 2.0, as we remember, can raise the voltage up to 12 V. And since the QC standard does not have any check for the presence of such a chip in the cable, all this can end sadly for both the cable and the smartphone.

Of course, Google could not stand aside, and officially recommended that smartphone manufacturers refuse to use USB-C together with QC 2.0. However, as expected, many manufacturers (for example, OnePlus) assured users that there would be no problems with their cables, but if your smartphone burned out from using a third-party cable, that, as they say, is your problem.

Further - even more “fun”: in order to distinguish between cables that can pass 3 A, 1.5 A and 1 A, the USB consortium decided to build resistors into them of 10, 22 and 56 kOhm, respectively. But the Chinese, as usual, decided to put only 10 kOhm resistors in cheap cables - this led to the fact that devices with USB-C support 1.2 “understands” that 3 A can be taken and requests it from the charger. The result here can be absolutely anything - in best case scenario The charger will deliver the current it can (and it’s unlikely to be 3 A), and in the worst case, it will simply burn out, possibly damaging the connected smartphone.

Towards the end of 2015, the USB consortium releases the specifications of the Power Delivery 3.0 standard, which in the future, most likely, will be used by everyone: for example, it allows you to set the voltage from 5 to 20 V and the current from 1.8 to 5 A, so that in the end the maximum power can reach as much as 100 watts - this is already enough to charge a laptop, and many modern solutions like Xiaomi Notebook or Apple MacBook already use it. In this case, the type of connector can be any: USB-C, microUSB, even USB-A, and the transfer goes in both directions: that is, you can charge a smartphone from a smartphone. At the same time, there is backward compatibility with USB-C 1.2, that is, the same Lumia 950 can be charged from a charger with PD support. All possible charge combinations are available below:

Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0-4.0

Of course, the company understood that overheating problems needed to be solved, and in 2016, with the release of Snapdragon 820/821, QC 3.0 technology was introduced. Qualcomm stopped chasing power - it still remained within 18 W, but now there was a flexible voltage setting: if in version 2.0 5, 9 or 12 V were rigidly set, then here it was possible to change the voltage in steps of 0.2 V in the range of 3.6 -20 V. In addition, smartphone manufacturers themselves could now limit maximum voltage, for example, at 12 V. Plus the fact that the new Snapdragon (821, 820, 620, 618, 617 and 430 are supported) were still colder than the failed 810, in the end we can assume that the overheating problem has been solved.

Unfortunately, another problem with USB-C still remained, so using third-party cables for fast charging through this port was still risky. As for charging speed, the company promises that most smartphones with QC 3.0 will charge up to 70% in half an hour:

The QC 4.0 standard was introduced at the end of 2016 and solved many problems: firstly, it could now be used with any USB-C cables- of course, the charging speed will depend on them, but in any case it will still go faster than with standard 1 A and 5 V. Its second feature is full compatibility with Power Delivery, so first charging asks the connected device whether it supports it is PD, and if not, it switches to QC mode.

The specifications of the QC 4.0 standard are the same as those of 3.0 - up to 18 W at currents up to 2 A and voltages up to 12 V, and up to 27 W via the PD standard. Supported chipsets are Snapdragon 630, 636, 835. According to Qualcomm, the new technology will allow you to recharge a device with a 2750 mAh battery for 5 hours of use in just 5 minutes, and charge the battery from scratch to 50% in 15 minutes.

QC 4+ technology, introduced in 2017, is not much different from 4.0: for example, Dual Charge technology allows you to divide the current into two streams, which reduces the temperature by 3 degrees and increases the charging speed by 15%. Supported chipsets are Snapdragon 660, 670, 710, and 845.

The general table of all QC versions looks like this:

Backward Compatibility

All versions of QC since 2.0 are backwards compatible: so if a phone has a newer version of QC than charging, it will use a protocol that supports charging, but with the energy-efficient version that the phone uses. If you connect a smartphone with more old version QC to charging with a newer one, then the effect will be completely similar to using charging with the same version of QC that the device supports.

Power Delivery Compatible with Quick Charge 2.0 and 3.0

As I wrote above, it is not officially available, but in practice various options are possible: for example, there are smartphones, such as the Nexus 5x or 6p, that support both PD and QC - in both cases they will charge quickly. The second option is that the charger and gadget will not “understand” each other, and standard slow charging with 1 A and 5 V will occur, or charging will not occur at all. But there may be the worst case scenario: a device without PD support will receive 3 A and 5 V (USB-C 1.2 standard) due to the “wrong” cable with a 10 kOhm resistor, and here the situation will be unpredictable: the QC standard with such does not work with currents, that is, the smartphone may simply burn out, or it may simply refuse to charge. Therefore, if your device supports QC 2.0 or 3.0, choose both the cable and the charger very carefully.

In the final part of the article, we will talk about fast charging from other manufacturers such as Apple, Huawei, Mediatek and others.

Fast charging (Quick Charge) is a technology that increases the standard USB specification voltage and current at the output of the power supply to speed up charging the battery of a phone or tablet. Fast charging modes vary depending on the technology. Fast charging support is implemented in smartphones and Samsung tablets Galaxy ASUS ZenFone, Google NEXUS and a certain number of other devices.

Today, most smartphones are capable of charging from 5-watt chargers with USB output, and tablets - use up to 2.1 A from a 5 volt charger. How many Amperes to take from the USB port of the charger is decided by the battery controller of the smartphone or tablet, so it is quite safe to connect the smartphone to a 5 V / 2 A charger - the controller uses as much current as is needed for charging.

So, to charge quickly modern gadgets, like a smartphone or tablet, well-known manufacturers mobile platforms developed special technologies.
Qualcomm has already presented the fourth version of the technology Quick Charge 4, and MediaTek, in turn, presented two specifications Pump Express and Pump Express Plus.

Each of these technologies uses the same techniques - either increasing the current, or increasing the voltage, or both. Qualcomm became a pioneer in fast charging - the technology was presented in February 2013 Quick Charge 1.0. Devices supporting this technology can be charged at 5 Volts and use 2 Amperes. As you can imagine, tablets with Quick Charge support began to charge as quickly as iPads, and smartphones - almost twice as fast as others.

Next generation Quick Charge 2.0 made it possible to use increased voltage for charging up to 12 volts. More precisely, for QC 2.0 you can choose from three fixed voltages: 5 V, 9 V and 12 V (optional, 20 V chargers are also available). At the same time, the maximum power of the power supply can reach 18 W.

Quick Charge 3.0 appeared in processor-based devices Qualcomm Snapdragon 820, 620, 618, 617, 430 and newer. Different increased efficiency and intelligence. A compatible charger can dynamically change voltage from 3.2 V to 20 V in 200 millivolt increments. The current strength also changes dynamically. Moreover, changes in the power supply configuration continue during the charging process - the current decreases as the battery is charged in order to save its resource. In particular, because of this, the last 20-30% of charging occurs noticeably slower. The power of Quick Charge 3.0 power supplies remains the same - 18 W maximum, but charges gadgets a little faster, due to better optimization process.

With the announcement Qualcomm processor Snapdragon 835 information has appeared about Quick Charge 4.0. 20% faster and 30% more efficient. Capable of giving 5 hours of work in 5 minutes of charging.

Note that the technology implemented in chargers is not at all demanding on the type of cable - you can use regular USB Type micro B, USB Type C cables or cables with a proprietary connector from the gadget manufacturer. It should also be noted that fast charging is only fast up to approximately 80% charge. And it will take a long time to charge the battery to 100%, to avoid damage to the battery.

Regarding fast charging technologies MediaTek Pump Express and Pump Express Plus- Little is known about her. More precisely, there are very few smartphones and tablets, as well as chargers themselves, that support this technology. The essence does not change from this. Pump Express allows you to charge devices using a voltage of 3.6 - 5 Volts and with a charging current of no more than 2 Amps. That is, this technology is designed to compete with Quick Charge 1.0. In turn, Pump Express Plus allows you to use various voltages of 5 - 7 Volts, 9 Volts and 12 Volts, and the output current can reach 3 Amperes. True, MediaTek says nothing about 5 Volts and 3 Amps. But there is a mention of 9 V and 1.67 A (15 W), as well as the most powerful block power supply 12 V and 2 A (24 W).

* - The list is for informational purposes only. Exact list compatible devices no, details may appear.

There are other USB fast charging technologies, for example. The technology allows you to charge devices under a voltage of 9 Volts with a current of 2 Amps. An 18-watt charger, in particular, is included in the delivery package of some ASUS smartphones ZenFone 2.
In Samsung, similar technology for TOP Galaxy smartphones Note 4, Galaxy Note Edge, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S7, Galaxy S6 active, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy S6 edge+ and Galaxy Note 5 have named and released a special charger. It can produce a voltage of 5 or 9 Volts and a current of 2 or 1.67 Amps, respectively.

In general, given that the “normal” voltage for USB devices is 5 Volts, it looks quite logical when some smartphones that support USB fast charging technology are equipped with chargers with characteristics of 5 Volts and 3 Amperes. For example, such chargers can be found bundled with and from LG.

Knowing that there are a huge number of and, some of which are capable of delivering up to 2.4 Amps per USB port, it is difficult to convince yourself of the need to purchase expensive certified chargers. After all, it is obvious that smartphones and tablets that support fast charging technologies will be taken from USB port all necessary and available charging current, accordingly, can be charged faster than from a standard charger with more modest characteristics. The conclusion, of course, is theoretical, and therefore does not claim to be the absolute truth.
We add that the specification of the new connector and cable assumes the ability to use a maximum current of 5 Amps per connector and 3 Amps per standard cable. In theory, at 20 Volts you can reach 100 W - excessive for the vast majority of smartphones and tablets. In practice, we will see the implementation of all kinds of fast charging functions (including those described above) using a standard USB cable Type C, as well as expanding the range of USB chargers with increased output current.