Qualcomm Quick Charge Version 5.0 is Here and It has taken Fast Charging to Next Level!

It's been quite some time since Qualcomm has shared an upgrade to it's Quick Charge technology 4.0. More and more vendors are looking for getting the huge batteries pumped up as quickly as possible. With technologies like 5G, 120Hz refresh rate, High GPU Clocking, it's only logical that the power gets siphoned out quickly and that's the reason for high battery capacity. High battery capacity leads to the next issue which is time taken to charge the battery. That's where the Qualcomm Quick Charge Solution comes into action. 

As you can see the Quick Charge 4.0 was upto 2.5 times faster than the regular charging speeds while the Quick Charge 5.0 could speed it up to 10 times the regular charging speeds. This opens up gateways to get the 100 W of power blazing through those charging cables. 

The Tech Behind It ?

It's essentially shifting some of the heat to the chargers wherein the voltage can be delivered to 2 cells instead of 1 at the device. The current voltage being 4.4v would mean that a total of 8.8 V can be supplied to the device and that's the bottleneck that has been plaguing the smartphone vendors. In practical, however the cables used for connecting the smartphones are capable of withstanding 3A and that would technically not reach the 100W theoretical peak. It could reach peaks of about 53 W power. Qualcomm has added a new PMIC SMB1396 and SM1398 that can control the charging of the 2 cells in the battery section of the phone respectively. Further they claim that the device will be 10 degrees celsius cooler than the existing as the charger would be taking away some heat and also since 2 cells are being used the capacity per cell gets divided. 

In Layman Terms : 

Consider the battery to be a tank and the charger to be a pump that will fill out the tank. Now, as your tank starts growing bigger it takes more time to fill. So, the pump has to pump the water faster in order to fill it quicker. But, the catch here is the pipe can deliver only so much and thus limits the speed of the pump. Now, if you split it into 2 tanks and the pump gets connected to both these tanks. So, the total amount of water stored is the same but split into to 2 tanks. Now, both these tanks can be simultaneously filled up leading and the pump can also support faster speeds.  That's the jist of this new release by Qualcomm 

How Will it Benefit the User ?

Well, vendors like Oppo and Vivo have already claimed to have crossed the 100W barrier fast charging but what they are not telling is that the cables would have to sustain about 6A current and 20V supply voltage. Currently, the 30W fast charger supports 10V and 3A current. The voltage is not really the issue, but the current is! Higher the current higher is the heat dissipated. With the Qualcomm Quick Charge 5 solution they can actually avert it by employing 2 battery cells and each charges independently. That way the load of charging and discharging is distributed and also the speeds can be maintained even though the capacity has increased. So, better life for batteries in general ! 

Will we be Seeing it Soon ? 

Usually, it takes about 6-8 months for a product to come up with a technology after its launch. So, we can expect it in the Samsung Galaxy S11 or Oppo Find X5 or Xiaomi Mi Note 11 Pro. 

Until then Stay Safe!