Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 5 standard promises 50 percent charge in less than five

By Chaim Gartenberg Jul 27, 2020

Qualcomm has introduced Quick Charge 5, the company’s latest fast-charging standard, and it’s bringing some big promises: more than 100W charging speeds on a smartphone, with the ability to charge a device from 0 to 50 percent in five minutes or fully charge a phone in 15 minutes.

It’s been a few years since Qualcomm introduced its last major quick-charging standard, Quick Charge 4 (which also had an enhanced version, Quick Charge 4+), but the new version represents the biggest leap yet for the company — at least where sheer charging speed is concerned. Qualcomm isn’t being shy about how big of an improvement this is: the company says that Quick Charge 5 is up to 70 percent more efficient than Quick Charge 4, up to 4 times faster at charging, while still running 10 degrees Celsius cooler than the old version.

As noted by Anandtech, Quick Charge 5 is actually leveraging the existing USB Power Delivery Programmable Power Supply (PD-PPS) standard (a subset of the existing USB-C PD spec), which allows for even greater control over voltage and current levels during the charging process. The advantage to that is that Quick Charge 5 is, in theory, universal — any USB PD-PPS charger should be able to charge your Quick Charge 5 device at full speed.

Another key change here is the fact that Quick Charge 5 now supports 2S battery systems for two battery cells wired in series, which allows for double the charging voltage. In turn, that increases charging speeds.

It’s also backwards compatible: older Quick Charge accessories and devices will still work with new Quick Charge 5-rated hardware, albeit at the fastest speed that those chargers can provide. (USB-C PD devices and iPhones, on the other hand, will still only get fast-charging benefits from the USB PD-based Quick Charge 4 and up.)

That leads to the biggest advantage of all: the fact that Quick Charge 5 is part of Qualcomm’s overall parts package. Qualcomm is already one of the biggest processor and modem suppliers, and tons of companies use its power solutions for the easy compatibility with those existing products — meaning that Quick Charge 5 will likely start popping up on tons of phones when the first devices start shipping in Q3 2020.