Gone are the days of your smartphone running low on battery as a new tech on charging will try to solve everyone's problem. With the rise of smartphones as the device essential to everyone's needs in this day of social media and connectivity, gone are the days of a cellphone used primarily for texting and calling. Smartphones are a much more convienent device as it does a variety of tasks that a simple cellphone couldn't dream of doing. It is essentially a personal computer at the palm of your hands. However, with the computing power in a small form factor, battery problems are inevitable as the size of a cellphone limits the battery capacity. Advancements on portable and rechargeable batteries have been at a standstill for 25 years without any major improvements. But now, Qualcomm, the chip manufacturer of almost every top Android smartphone has announced a major upgrade to its own Quick Charge tech that will hopefully solve every smartphone's battery woes.
Reportedly, the newest version of the Quick Charge, the Quick Charge 4 will give a phone five hours of battery life for just five minutes or 50% of its charge in under 15 minutes. The Quick Charge 4 will appear in Qualcomm's Spandragon 835 chip which is expected to launch next year. This will improve upon the already outstanding charging rate of the Quick Charge 3.0 which claims to charge a smartphone to 80% of its capacity in just 35 minutes. But basing on their reports, the Quick Charge 4 will be 20% faster than its predecessor.
This is in contrast of news a week after Google, who is addressing the exploding phone battery problems that have been plaguing some phones most notably, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7. Google recommends that Qalcomm's Quick Charge feature should be forbidden in all smartphones as it is not USB-PD compliant. USB-PD is a specification with the intention of preventing charged devices from exploding or catching fire. It acts as a pre-safety measure in such cases as most users leave their smartphones charging throughout the night as they sleep increasing the risk of the phone exploding. Many speculating that Google's announcement was an attempt to hinder Qualcomm's rather popular Quick Charge tech.
Previous iterations of the the Quick Charge from 1.0 up to 3.0 are not compliant with the USB-OD but the newest version of Quick Charge is fully compliant. This is great news for everyone owning a smartphone who have experiences of having their phones die down due to a weak battery. Nonetheless this can only be a temporary solution as computing speeds are increasing by the day while battery tech is still stuck in the past. If we want to completely solve our battery issues, then a new battery tech is needed.
