Qualcomm’s first charger with Quick Charge 3.0 breaks cover

How would you like to charge your phone much faster? That’s the promise of Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 and the first charger has been caught in the wild.

Chinese website Chongdiantou has shown pictures of the device, which supports charging at up to 3 amps. Quick charge only works with phones which have Snapdragon 820, 620, 618, 617 and 430 processors: meaning nothing you can buy today.

It uses “Intelligent Negotiation for Optimum Voltage” (INOV), a new algorithm developed by Qualcomm to determine what power level to request at any point in time for optimum power transfer, while maximising efficiency. With Quick Charge 3.0, you can charge a typical phone from zero to 80 per cent in about 35 minutes, compared to conventional mobile devices without Quick Charge, which may typically require almost an hour and a half.

Quick Charge 3.0 is designed to be up to 38 per cent more efficient than Quick Charge 2.0, while also implementing additional steps to help protect battery cycle life.

While Quick Charge 2.0 offers only four charging voltages – 5V, 9V, 12V and 20V – Quick Charge 3.0 provides flexibility, with 200mV increments from 3.6V to 20V. This allows the phone to request just enough voltage to reach the desired charge current, resulting in minimised losses, increased efficiency and improved thermal performance.

The dream of moving to micro-USB was that phones would be sold without chargers. This was supposed to be greener than having to get a new charger with a new phone. However, Quick Charge means that you will need a new charger – making it’s green claims somewhat ironic – and you can expect the plug to be different as phones and chargers move to the palindromic type C. ®