Energy is one of the most valuable resources in human life. And when we begin to experience its deficit, the bright minds of our civilization try to invent another 'miracle technology' that can reduce the amount of inconvenience associated with this deficit.
We all know that the most radical methods of solving electric power problems have not been invented (and this is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future), so the leading manufacturers of portable electronics chose a different path: instead of providing us with sufficiently capacious and compact energy carriers, they decided to make the charging process is less intrusive and time consuming. But business is business, and, as is always the case when it is necessary to standardize something, all corporations began to bend their line, and not thinking to attend to the issue of backward compatibility between different types of fast charging. To make life a little easier for you, today I will talk about the main types of high-speed charge recharge on mobile devices, how these approaches differ and how they affect the batteries of our devices.
Principle of operation
The axiom of all chargers – the more powerful the power supply, the higher the charging speed. And this is where the magic of numbers begins: if in a conventional charger the voltage is 5 V, and the current strength is a maximum of 2-2.5 A, then fast charges can boast values of 10 V and 5 A, respectively.
However, power alone is not enough. We also need a special controller in the power supply that will connect to the smartphone via a unique protocol. The most striking example is Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0. Chargers certified to this standard continuously receive information about the battery status from your smartphone to adjust voltage and amperage all the time. This technology was named INOV – Intel ligent Negotiation for Optimum Voltage, which can be translated as Intelligent Determination of Optimal Voltage. Therefore, for high-speed charging, you need to use only complete or certified chargers. Their counterfeits are rare, but you shouldn't lose your vigilance, because charging the battery “wrong and wrong” can lead to the failure of your device or even lead to a fire.
Another point that developers and marketers always focus on is the speed at which the first 50% of the battery charge is replenished. The fact is that the power supply produces peak power values only when charging an almost empty battery. Take, for example, the well-known Quick Charge 3.0 technology from Qualcomm: it provides a maximum 20 V only at the beginning of charging, gradually reducing the voltage by 200 mV down to 3.2 V.
Standards
Currently, almost every smartphone and chipset manufacturer has its own fast charging technology. Let's start with the most famous ones.
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Quick Charge
It was Qualcomm who set the trend for fast charging. The Quick Charge 1.0 standard debuted in 2013 along with the Snapdragon 600 chipset and then evolved to the second version in 2015 (Snapdragon 200, 208, 210, 212, 400, 410, 412, 415, 425, 610, 615, 616, 800, 801, 805, 808, 810), a year later in 2016, QC 3.0 was introduced (Snapdragon 427, 430, 435, 617, 620, 625, 626, 650, 652, 653, 820, 821) and the last fourth version just appeared on light in just one processor – the flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 835.
Among the recent gadgets, Quick Charge 3.0 is found in the relatively fresh LG G6, which can charge its 3300mAh battery to 100% in 96 minutes.
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Pump express
Qualcomm's main competitor is Pump Express technology from MediaTek. The main distinguishing feature of PE 3.0 is direct charging, in which only the power supply itself controls the temperature and state of the smartphone. Among the mandatory requirements of Pump Express: the presence of a USB Type-C port in the smartphone and one of the supported SoCs (the list of the latter was not disclosed)
If we talk about specific devices, then Meizu Pro 6 received support for this standard, whose 2560 mAh battery is able to fully charge from 0 to 100% in just an hour.
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Super charge
Smartphones Huawei often stand out from competitors with capacious batteries, so the company could not help developing its own fast charging standard. The brainchild of the Chinese received the uncomplicated name Super Charge and quite good characteristics – power up to 22.5 W at voltages up to 5 V.
Only Huawei Mate 9 and P10 / P10 Plus flagships have SC support. Thanks to Super Charge, the Mate 9 replenishes 57% of its 4000 mAh in half an hour, which can be called a very good indicator.
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TurboPower
Another fast charger originally from China, but already from Lenovo. This standard, branded Motorola, was based on Quick Charge 2.0 and is backward compatible with it.
Technically, TurboPower is notable for its increased power – 25.8 W against 18 W in QC 2.0.
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Adaptive Fast Charging
This fast charging technology from Samsung can surely be called one of the most famous in the mobile market. All S- and Note-series smartphones from the Korean vendor, starting with the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy Note 4 models, are equipped with Adaptive Fast Charging support. The AFC delivers up to 15W of power at a maximum of 9V.
In practice, this is enough to charge the 3000 mAh battery of a Samsung Galaxy Note 5 to 50% in 30 minutes.
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Super mCharge
Super mCharge technology from Meizu, announced at MWC 2017, looks very promising. There are still no smartphones or chargers on the market that support SmC, but the company's engineers promise that in practice we will get an impressive 11 V voltage with a maximum power of 55 W.
Now such indicators are more typical for ultrabook power supplies, but certainly not smartphones. As a result, a smartphone with a 3000mAh battery should fully charge in just 20 minutes, and the first consumer devices Meizu are set to be released in late 2017 – early 2018.
What's next?
As you can see for yourself, ordinary users only have to dream of any unification among fast charging technologies. Fortunately, they are not alone in this endeavor – this is where Google enters the arena, which is striving to introduce a single standard for fast charging via USB Type-C. Dobra Corporation introduced USB Power Delivery technology 3 years ago, but it has not received much development, although there is still some progress in popularizing USB PD: for example, Qualcomm announced the backward compatibility of USB PD and Quick Charge 4.
A key feature of USB Power Delivery is the ability to charge a wide variety of gadgets, from high-performance laptops to compact smartphones.
Safety first
The lack of a single standard (and in general, the relative novelty of such a concept as 'fast charging' raises many questions, the main ones I will try to answer:
-(Incompatibility. Indeed, for the most part, high-speed charging technologies are absolutely incompatible with each other, but there are exceptions – for example, TurboPower from Motorola was created on the basis of Quick Charge 2.0, as a result of which they are fully compatible. Another example is Samsung's flagships that support not only Adaptive Fast Charging, but also Quick Charge 2.0. However, it should be noted that these are only general recommendations, in each case it is better to clarify the specific model of the smartphone and charger.
—What happens if you try to charge a phone with fast charging that does not support it or is not compatible with it?
Most likely nothing. Almost all fast charging power supplies have a basic mode that is suitable for charging any mobile device. In this mode, the current is limited to 2 A, and the voltage to 5 V, so that you cannot damage an unsupported gadget in any way. Still, it's better not to risk it and use only certified chargers.
-Does using fast charging shorten battery life? It is a myth. In fact, lithium battery wear depends on the amperage during charging and its temperature, both of which are controlled by the charger. Let's say a company Meizu swears that in their hyper-efficient Super mCharge, battery wear will not exceed 20% over 800 recharge cycles, which is pretty standard.
