With intensive use of smartphones, and this is the Internet, and music and films, it always needs to be recharged. A single charge for one day is not enough for most phones with this kind of use. And this is where the so-called fast charging can help a lot.
Fast charging your smartphone increases the voltage and current supplied to the battery within acceptable limits to achieve the minimum charging time. The current and voltage rise limits are determined by the characteristics of the battery itself and the charger for maximum safety.
With the increase in diagonal and screen resolution, as well as the power of the processors, the load on the battery also increased. We no longer have enough conventional charging of 5 volts and 2 amperes. With such a normal charge, the battery can be charged for at least two hours. Therefore, manufacturers have adopted fast charge technology.
But there were also questions. How harmful is fast charging for batteries? Is it true that smartphones can explode from this? What's the difference between Qualcomm Quick Charge and MediaTek Pump Express, and which is better? How does fast charging work in general?
Today there are several standards for fast charging. 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 9 volts and 2 amps, Samsung has developed a similar Adaptive Fast Charging technology, it can deliver 5 or 9 volts and a current of 2 or 1.67 amps, respectively.
How fast charging works
Any quick charge is based on the principle of increasing the power of the current transmitted to the batteries. But the increase in power in each of these technologies is achieved in different ways. This can be an increase in voltage up to 20 volts, and somewhere they increase the current strength to 5-6 amperes, and someone combines these methods and increases both the voltage and the current strength. 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
- special charger capable of delivering the required current
- powerful cable capable of transmitting high power current
Fast Charging harm
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 proving the negative impact of fast charging on the battery, but there are also studies that completely refute this.
Modern lithium-ion and lithium-polymer batteries do not matter with what current and voltage they will be charged. If you take a laptop, they still have the same lithium-ion batteries, only more. But if you look at the parameters of the charger, then you will see the current strength in the range of 4-5 amperes and a voltage of about 20 volts, and the most evil fast charge technologies give out 12 volts and 2-3 amperes, and then 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. Heating has the most detrimental effect on the battery; it is he who kills the battery and reduces its capacity.
Overheating is the main cause of fires and explosions... All modern fast charge technologies are equipped with a huge number of overheating protection systems, but why are new photos of burned devices appearing on the network? Because no system can protect the gadget from the influence of the user, who charges the device with anything or any other.
Therefore, never skimp on chargers and cables. Ideally, always charge your smartphone with the original charger and cable, do not charge a damaged device. If the body of the smartphone is bent, cracked or punctured, then it is better not to risk it and not to use such a device at all. Never leave a charging smartphone covered with anything, in a tight case or in a bag.
The second reason for the breakdown of gadgets is low-quality components or defects.... If you buy a phone for $ 50, then you shouldn't hope that it has a good battery. But the top brands also have drawbacks. You can remember the sensational story about.
Comparison of technologies
Now let's take a look at 3 promising fast charging technologies. This is Qualcomm Quick Charge, a slightly less common Pump Express from MediaTek and VOOC Flash Charge technology found only in Oppa devices.
Oppa VOOC Flash Charge
Let's start with Super VOOC Flash Charge. This is, although less common, but the most interesting, fastest and most gentle technology.
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 prevents the battery from heating up. These results were obtained through the use of special batteries that can withstand currents 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. Oppo is said to have transferred the technology to OnePlus, and it tried to develop its own version of Dash Charge based on VOOC Charge.
MediaTek Pump Express
Next Fast Charge Pump Express. It is not very dependent on the specific batteries and materials from which the connectors and cables are made.
The current Pump Express 3.0 charges the batteries from 0 to 70% in just 20 minutes. The technology uses a voltage of 3 volts with an amperage of more than 5 amperes. With Pump Express, you can charge the battery directly, bypassing intermediate circuits, without affecting the standard on-board charging circuit. But this option is only possible when using the USB Type-C connector, because it can greatly reduce energy leakage and reduce heat. To protect against overheating, there are 20 built-in protection systems.
The first processor with Pump Express 3.0 support is Helio P20, it is announced that subsequent chipsets will receive support for this standard.
MediaTek sells its processors in large quantities to any smartphone manufacturer, so Pump Express should be found in many smartphones on MediaTek, 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 are concerned about the safety of batteries, which are not always made with high quality in 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 chargers. The development of the Quick Charge technology has been going on for 4 generations and has been brought to the ideal.
All versions of the standard are backward compatible, that is, you can use the version 4 charger with a phone that only supports version 1, in which case the 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 development.
Qualcomm introduced the first version of the standard back in 2013, the implementation of Quick Charge hasn't changed much since then. Integration into a mobile device takes place through a separate microcircuit or together with a Snapdragon chip (central processing unit) and a special adapter that can deliver increased 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 in 5 volts and 2-2.5 amperes, the second generation allowed the use of an increased voltage of up to 12 volts, more precisely, the controller himself chose the required value from three fixed values at 5V / 9V / 12V with a maximum current of 3 ampere. In this case, the permissible maximum power of the power supply unit can reach 18 watts. But with such a power, problems with heating began to appear sharply, and already in the next versions of the standard, engineers paid more attention to protecting the battery from overheating.
The main innovation of Quick Charge 3.0 is not an increased charging speed, but the technology's ability to save energy by avoiding excess heat generation. The new INOV technology made it possible to implement this approach, that is, intelligent determination of the required voltage. Thanks to this innovation, data is exchanged between the charging 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 tune to the required voltage.
As the battery charges or heats up, the controller gradually reduces the required voltage. This is also the reason why the last 20% take longer to charge. As a result, charging is gentle, the battery does not overheat, and its wear is minimized.
And already last year, devices appeared with support for Quick Charge 4.0, the 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 check system, which will prevent the device from charging from a poor-quality or damaged wire.
But the main novelty in Quick Charge 4.0 will be support for the USB Power Delivery standard. This is a fast charging technology developed by Google. Perhaps in the future, PD will become the basis for combining various fast charging standards, 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 be able to 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, do not lose their capacity even after 2000 charge cycles and have a higher energy storage density. Perhaps such batteries will appear in 10 years, and we will switch to them, there are already prototypes.
And there are also developments for the manufacture 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.
The battery life of a modern smartphone is a stumbling block for all manufacturers. You can endlessly increase the power of the chipset, display resolution, use the coolest camera, but all these advantages do not matter if the device lives on charging for only half a day. The obvious solution is to increase the capacity and quality of batteries, but the first is limited by the body of the smartphone, and the second is limited by modern technologies.
As a result, the 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 for a week, then you can make it charge so quickly that the operating time is no longer decisive.
About technology
The main factor affecting the rate at which a battery is charged is the current supplied by the power supply. The higher the amperage, the faster your smartphone will charge. However, it is impossible to endlessly and thoughtlessly raise the current strength, as this will entail the need to adapt the rest of the smartphone components 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. For this, the power was increased to 10 W, the current - up to 2 A, and the voltage was 5 V. The charging speed with this approach increased by 40%. In the second generation of Quick Charge, they learned to use the voltage of 9 and 12 V, this allowed increasing the power to 36 W and slightly increasing the charging speed.
The main difference between Quick Charge 3.0 is a significant reduction in heating of the case and charger. This is achieved thanks to Intelligent Negotiation for Optimum Voltage (INOV) technology, which allows voltage regulation in 200 mV steps in the range from 3.6 to 20 V.
A point change in voltage depending on the current charge of the battery made it possible not to overheat the case, while the charging time was further reduced. So, Qualcomm promises to charge the smartphone by 80% in 35 minutes. And it completely changes the habits of using a smartphone. Let's talk about this in more detail.
Usage scenarios
Most smartphones now live one business day without charging with average usage. As soon as you switch to a more intense 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 power saving mode and try not to touch the smartphone until the evening, which, you see, is not very convenient.
The second option is to use an external battery. In this case, you must either leave the smartphone alone for an hour or two, or accept the fact that a long wire will stick out of it leading to an external battery. A side disadvantage of this solution is the need to carry such a "power bank" with you, which also weighs as much as a smartphone itself.
Fast charging is a great alternative to the above two scenarios. Finding a free charge for half an hour will not be difficult, especially if you are sitting in a cafe. We connect a smartphone, have 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 a smartphone? Unfortunately, even large manufacturers often save on this little thing and put a regular power supply in the box, although the Quick Charge 3.0 inscription flaunts on the package. But even if the smartphone is equipped with an appropriate charger, it usually lies at home, and another one will be needed 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, but, on the contrary, there are cheap offers from various little-known companies. I don't want to overpay for the brand, but entrusting the charging of the smartphone to a noname company is also scary.
A good alternative to both solutions is the choice of 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 manufactured by Ainy, known to many users for its protective glasses based on Asahi Glass.
All Ainy accessories are tested and rejected at the Shenzhen warehouse. Therefore, at a relatively low price (only 800 rubles), their chargers are of the quality of large manufacturers.
Conclusion
If your smartphone supports Quick Charge 3.0 fast charging, but the kit did not have the appropriate power supply, or you want to have another charger for travel, then it makes sense to look at Ainy chargers. To get the opportunity to charge your smartphone by 80% in half an hour for only 800 rubles is an excellent offer.
The biggest problem with modern mobile devices is their battery life. Sometimes the battery lasts for a maximum of 4 hours, after which you will have to look for a charge and a place where you can recharge. At such moments, you want to keep your smartphone on charge 24 hours a day. There are two ways to solve this problem: either use a rechargeable battery with a larger capacity, or charge the battery faster in time.
Quick Charger(literally "fast charge") is a technology that came from Qualcomm back in June 2012, which allows you to charge mobile devices several times faster. Other chip makers also boast similar fast charging technology. This is how MediaTek accelerates charging gadgets using technology Pump express plus which works with the company's chipsets, including the flagship MT6595 and the more affordable MT6732. Motorola offers a charger Turbo charger, which allows you to charge the battery of the gadget 75% faster than conventional chargers.
But still Quick charge leads the market for fast memory, possibly due to the fact that Intel and Samsung are licensed for Qualcomm technology and do not offer their own developments.
How does fast charging work?
Many of you have long noticed that your smartphone charges faster when you connect the charger to a wall outlet than when charging from a computer's USB port. This happens because the output power of the outlet is 220V higher than the output power of the USB 2.0 port (5 Volts and 1 or 2 Amperes versus 5 Volts, 0.5 Amperes). Using simple formulas from a school physics course, you can calculate that a wall outlet will charge your device 100% much faster than a USB port.
In addition, every smartphone has a power management circuit built into its PCB. This circuit defines the limits of how much the battery's power consumption can accept the amperage power (i.e. charge) without negatively affecting the battery. Smartphones without fast charging are limited to a maximum of 10 watts (i.e. 5 volts multiplied by 2 amperes).
Fast charging effectively raises this limit. If the power adapter can increase the power (for example, up to 15 W, i.e. 9 Volts multiplied by 1.67 Amperes), and if the smartphone's power management scheme allows it to take this extra power, then the power adapter will charge the battery much faster.
Does my phone support fast charging?
To support fast charging technology on a smartphone or tablet, you need to have three things:
- Quick Charge Certified Phone or Tablet;
- Charging adapter supporting Quick Charge;
- High quality USB cable.
All these points are needed in combination. You will not be able to charge your smartphone or tablet if at least one of these points is not fulfilled. Therefore, if you have a Quick Charge charging adapter and an appropriate quality USB cable, you will not be able to use the fast charging function if your smartphone is not Quick Charge certified.
A list of devices that are guaranteed to support Quick Charge technology can be found on the Qualcomm website. There are currently not many devices released for MediaTek and its Pump Express Plus technology to see a list of.
As for USB cables, fast charging is supported by the standard micro USB, USB Type A, and the new standard USB Type C... All modern computer connectors and more can be found in the article Types of computer ports: types of connectors and adapters.
Thus, the simplest cable required is 24 AWG (American Wire Gauge)... AWG Marking - American Standard for Conductor Measurement, which states the following:
The thicker and shorter the cable, the lower its resistance should be, therefore, the voltage drop is lower, therefore, the less likely that the USB device will be unstable.
The number of the cable indicates its size: a lower number indicates a larger size. And it is usually written like this: USB 28/24 AWG... The first number (28) refers to the size of the conductor, the second number (24) refers to the size of the power wire. A 24 AWG cable is most preferred for fast charging, and a 20 AWG USB cable may not work.
In addition, the labeling of the "correct" USB cable must include:
- Shield - shielded cable
- P (Pair) - the conductors are twisted into a pair. The presence of P in one of the digits is highly desirable.
- 2C - two conductors.
Charge time 0 to 60%, charge time 0 to 100%
There is another important point to be aware of about fast charging. The point is that fast charging technology speeds up the initial charging period, but it cannot speed up the overall charging period.
Those. fast charging maintains a high charging rate relative to the total charge time, but up to about 60%. Further, the charge speed rapidly drops to the usual level and from 60% to 100% the phone charges in time, in general, a little faster than normal charging.
The fact is that a large return of electricity when charging produces more heat. Lithium batteries can be damaged if they overheat; therefore all quick chargers have a temperature sensor. And if it becomes too critical during the charging process, fast charging will tend to reduce the power consumption to the usual values of the USB 2.0 standard.
Qualcomm is trying to address this issue with the new Quick Charge 3.0, but the technology is still under development for now.
Please note that 60% is an approximate figure for reaching the maximum charge threshold for fast charging. Some phones and tablets can handle higher rates up to 75%.
Unification of chargers for Quick Charger
All the devices that come out recently and are certified by Quick Charger do not give the user to worry about which gadgets from which companies are worth buying and which ones are not, in order to keep the fast charging function.
If you have a Quick Charge certified charger from Motorola and want to connect it to your HTC One M8, fast charging will work as before.
Hence, it should be understood that you do not need to pay attention to brands. It doesn't matter if you are using a Nexus and an ASUS charger or a third-party charger, they will all be the same charging speed.
Smartphones today are endowed with powerful hardware and a lot of all kinds of functions. One of them is the fast charging function. So far, it is used only on flagship devices, but in the future it will also appear on low-cost smartphones. What it is?
Formally, the name of the function reflects its essence - the smartphone can quickly charge. To be more precise, it can charge faster than smartphones that are not equipped with fast charging. For example, the Sasmung Galaxy Note 4 with a battery capacity of just over 3000 mAh in 30 minutes is capable of charging as much as 50%! Agree, the result is impressive. True, a full charge takes much longer, but the charge rate will still be high.
For now, fast charging is only supported by certain processors. One of the leaders in this area is Qualcomm, which produces Snapdragon processors, which are used in many smartphones. The proprietary Quick Charge technology works only with an appropriate power adapter. If you use a different adapter, you can forget about the technology.
How does a smartphone fast charge?
Each device is designed for a certain current and voltage, that is, when charging, the device only passes a certain current.
Special adapters, which are used in smartphones with support for fast charging, allow the device to accept higher voltage and amperage. It is thanks to this technology that the smartphone charges much faster.
True, there is one very important feature that must be taken into account. The fact is that accelerated charging of the device is divided into several stages. At the very first stage, the maximum current is supplied, due to which the charge of the device literally grows before our eyes. However, upon reaching 50-70%, the current begins to drop sharply, as a result of which the charging speed to the remaining 100% decreases. Why is this done? It's simple - so that the battery does not overheat and fail. By the way, that is why advertisements for fast charging technologies say something like: “In just 30 minutes you can charge your smartphone up to 50%!”, Because the device can charge for another hour, or even longer, to the remaining 100%.
What is fast charging technology for?
It is clear that this allows you to reduce the charging time of the device, which, of course, is a big plus. In fact, the main focus is on charging for the first 10-20 minutes. Example: your smartphone is running low, there are literally 5% left. You run into a cafe, order coffee and put the device on the charger, fortunately, the power adapter is with you. During those 10-15 minutes that you drink coffee, the device will have time to charge up to 35-50%, which is quite enough for the rest of the day. And, in our opinion, this is a huge advantage of this technology.
By the way, a similar technology is used on many electric vehicles: in the first couple of hours, the batteries can be charged up to 50-80%, and the remaining charge can take another 5-6 hours, if not more.
Qualcomm Quick Charge Is a technology from a well-known manufacturer of mobile processors that allows you to speed up the charging of your gadget's battery. If you recently bought a new smartphone, chances are high that the included power supply comes with QC and is capable of charging your phone significantly faster than any other chargers you have in your arsenal. This little piece of magic is called Quick Charge from, and it's a two-step process that promises to charge your phone quickly and most importantly without compromising battery life.
Quick Charge 2.0
Quick Charge 2.0 is one of the first technologies from Qualcomm, which the company describes as “a complete suite of power management technologies” for charging your device using a regular micro USB cable. For such charging to work, the company has two main requirements for Quick Charge 2.0:
- smartphone or tablet with Snapdragon processor on board
- power supply with support for Quick Charge 2.0
Since this is a two step process, both the power supply and the phone or tablet must be licensed and certified by Qualcomm to function properly. Since almost every new smartphone offering Quick Charge 2.0 comes with a compatible power bank, users almost always have what it takes to take advantage of this technology out of the box.
Manufacturer pays for a license to use QC
There are also some smartphones on sale with Snapdragon processors, where the manufacturer refused to pay for the license to use Quick Charge 2.0. A striking example of this is OnePlus and their OnePlus 3T smartphone, which uses its own fast charging Dash Charge. So be sure to check the specifications on your next device to be absolutely sure that this unit is QC-capable.
The main part of the technology is hidden, of course, in the power supply, a smaller part falls on the processor, namely voltage and current control. Almost all chargers today offer 10 watts of power, or 5V / 2A out of the box, which greatly speeds up the charging of most smartphones and tablets. Qualcomm's Quick Charge technology allows you to use multiple charging options for your device, and they come in different shapes and sizes.
The technology works in the following way: it recognizes the current state of the battery and intelligently adjusts the power of your device. As a result, your phone won't charge as quickly from 70 to 100 percent as it does from 0 to 60 percent. That's why every Quick Charge update boasts the ability to quickly go from 0% to 50% charge in just 30 minutes. This is to regulate the wattage and prevent high voltage and current from ruining your smartphone's battery.
The biggest question related to this technology is the issue of battery life, in particular Does Quick Charge Affect Battery Life on your device. Generally, slower charging allows your battery to function for a longer time than fast battery charging. A side effect of higher charging rates is heating of the case, and high temperatures almost always negatively affect the electronics. However, there is no evidence yet to support battery performance degradation associated with continued use of Qualcomm's QC fast charger.
Considering that the average operating time of a smartphone is 1.5-2 years, during this time users will not have time to ruin the smartphone battery with fast charging. At the very least, battery wear will be the same as using a conventional "slow" charger.
In late 2015, Qualcomm released the updated Quick Charge 3.0 technology. It uses the same basic principles as Quick Charge 2.0, but now you can charge phones with QC 3.0 even faster.
In laboratory tests using a 2750 mAh battery, the Quick Charge 3.0 device charged the battery from 0% to 80% in 35 minutes, while a device without Quick Charge 3.0 with a conventional charger (5V / 1A) reached only 12% charge in those 35 minutes.
Charging speed from 0% to 80% in 35 minutes
This technology is based on what Qualcomm calls Intelligent Negotiation for Optimum Voltage (INOV). This is a new computational algorithm that allows the device to determine the power level it needs at a given time. This means that charging always operates at the most efficient and optimized power transfer rate to the battery. Support for a wider voltage range (200mV from 3.6V to 20V) means your smartphone can dynamically adjust to one of dozens of charging levels.
Quick Charge 3.0 is implemented in the same way as previous versions, and all devices with QC 3.0 are fully backward compatible with gadgets with Quick Charge 2.0 and Quick Charge 1.0 on board. QC 3.0 supports USB Type-A, USB Type-C, and micro USB. Manufacturers can easily use QC 3.0 for a wide range of chargers, not only classic chargers, but also pavebranks and other equipment.
Quick Charge 4.0
For the first time, QC 4.0 comes with a flagship processor, the technology promises even faster charging speeds than ever before. Quick Charge 4.0 has three key improvements:
- 20% faster than QC 3.0
- 30% more efficient than Quick Charge 3
- works at a temperature of about 5 degrees Celsius
Additional "battery saver" features will extend the battery life of your phone, and QC 4.0 is fully compatible with USB-PD USB (USB-PD) (Power Delivery). But the last interesting feature on our list is perhaps the most important. In its latest Android Compatibility Definition document, Google strongly encouraged manufacturers to move away from non-standard USB-C chargers like Quick Charge and stick to the USB-PD specification. With QC 4.0, you can not only extend the autonomy of your phone up to five hours with just five minutes of charging, but you do not have to worry about the compatibility of the charger and your smartphone.
QC 4.0 almost does not heat up the case
QC 4.0 also includes the latest iteration of Qualcomm's power management algorithm, Intelligent Negotiation for Optimum Voltage (INOV). This add-on is responsible for real-time temperature control, it will adjust the temperature during power-on to ensure safe and efficient operation. The first devices with Quick Charge 4.0 on board are Xiaomi Mi6 and Samsung Galaxy S8 (version with SD 835 chip). More smartphones with QC 4.0 support will appear in the third quarter of 2017.
