Skip to content 
Qualcomm Quick Charge 5 Detailed: It’s Properly FAST…
Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 5 will charge your phone from 0% to 50% in five minutes and from 0% to 100% in 15 minutes…
Imagine being able to charge up your phone from dead to 100% inside 15 minutes. That’d be pretty cool, right? Well, if you buy an Android phone inside the next two years, this is something you’ll probably experience – so long as it is running a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset.
Qualcomm has just unveiled its new Quick Charge 5 technology, a new super-speedy charging technology that will let users top up their phones by as much as 50% inside five minutes. Got a fully dead phone? You can charge it back up to 100% inside 15 minutes.
“Quick Charge 5, our fastest and most versatile charging solution, will enable consumers to enjoy their devices for longer periods of time, without worrying about the time required to recharge. We are proud to expand our technology portfolio and make accessible 100W+ charging a commercial reality,” said Ev Roach, VP Product Management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
She added: “We work closely with manufacturers to create industry-leading devices that meet consumers’ demand for more immersive and accessible mobile experiences.”
And, yes, that is absolutely rapid – even by 2020’s already very impressive standards, thanks to firms like OnePlus (Warp Charge) and RealMe and OPPO. In this year alone, we’ve seen phones released with 65W charging and 35W wireless charging.
OPPO plans to bring 125W wired charging and 65W wireless charging to the market as well, something we’ll most likely see in early 2021. Qualcomm, by all accounts, has been rather quiet on this front; it hasn’t updated its Quick Charge tech since 2017. But it appears the company has been hard at work on its successor, Quick Charge 5.
What is Quick Charge 5?
Qualcomm says Quick Charge 5 is the world’s fastest commercial phone charging solution . It’ll charge your phone insanely fast, as noted above, but it will also bring additional things into play – things like dual charge technology, improved thermal management, and smart identification of what’s actually connected to the charger.
Quick Charge 5 Features
- Up to 70% more efficient than Quick Charge 4
- 4x faster than Quick Charge 4
- 10x more powerful than Quick Charge 1
- Charges 10ºC cooler than Quick Charge 4
- Will be supported by over 1000 accessories
- Supported by over 250 phone brands
Quick Charge 5 Benefits – What The Above Points Actually Mean
Speed is one thing, but you don’t want all that extra power ruining your battery or decreasing the natural life cycle of your phone’s battery. Qualcomm says that because Quick Charge 5 is designed to run cool and is supremely power-efficient, it will not only charge your phone quickly but it will also protect your phone’s battery and even help extend its natural life cycle.
This is important too. Phone batteries only have a certain amount of recharge cycles before they die for good – this is known as battery degradation. It’s also the reason why, after several years of use, a phone struggles to hold its charge, even when it says it is 100% full. Quick Charge 5 can help with this, apparently, though Qualcomm has not confirmed by how much.
The key to this process is Quick Charge 5’s ability to know what it is working with. Quick Charge 5 can distinguish between over 1000 different types of accessories and phones. For this reason, when you plug something in, Quick Charge 5 knows what that device is; it also knows what battery it has and how to charge it in the fastest, most-efficient manner.
Quick Charge 5 includes 12 separate voltage, current, and temperature protections as standard. These protections include, amongst other things, USB-input over-voltage protection at 25V and external power controls beyond 30V. And it also runs WAY cooler than Quick Charge 4 (at just 10ºC).
“Quick Charge solutions are widely available in a variety of mobile devices. The latest generation of Quick Charge 5 not only provides superior charging capabilities but helps intelligently extend a device’s battery life and reduce thermal output,” said Zhang Lei, Mi Phone vice president, and hardware R&D general manager at Xiaomi.
He added: “Xiaomi has always been committed to proactively driving the adoption of new technologies and accelerating the fulfillment of enhanced experiences. In the future, more Xiaomi users will be able to enjoy high-speed, safe, and superior charging experiences enabled by Quick Charge 5.”
Quick Charge 5 is supported on Snapdragon 865, 865 Plus, and future Snapdragon releases. The first commercial devices that support Quick Charge 5 will be available inside Q3 2020.
And my guess, seeing that Xiaomi commented on the release, is that it will be one of the first brands to use this technology.
And be sure to check out Does Apple Make Their Own Processors?