One of the pervasive problems around smartphones is the battery life. While smartphones have taken up an increasing amount of our computing time, this places enormous stress on the battery. One way to solve the problem is with top up charges throughout the day but charging can take away. To get around the issue, Qualcomm introduced their Quick Charge, now in its 4th iteration.
According to Qualcomm, the new Quick Charge 4 boats about 20% faster charging and 30% higher efficiency compared to Quick Charge 3.0. Qualcomm is claiming 50% charge in 15 minutes and 5 hours of battery life in 5 minutes. This comes courtesy of HVDCP+, Dual Charge++ and INOV 3. These allow better optimisation of voltage, thermal management, and efficiency. After the Note 7 fiasco, Qualcomm is emphasising the safety aspect of QC 4 including over-voltage, over current, over-temperature and cable quality detection protections.
Lastly, QC 4 will finally bring compatibility with the wider USB-PD spec. Previous iterations of Quick Charge were proprietary and broke the USB specifications. This led to Google recommending their OEMs not use Quick Charge. With the latest changes, QC 4 will no longer be out of spec with USB Type-C and USB Power Delivery. Integrated into the new Snapdragon 835 SoC, we can expect QC 4 devices to arrive in the first half of 2017.
