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Qualcomm has just made a considerable step forward, and announced “Quick Charge for Wireless Power”, in other words, the company’s Quick Charge technology is making a move to the wireless charging stage in order to ensure quality wireless charging. While announcing this move, the company mentioned that its Quick Charge technology is used by over 1,000 different mobile devices, accessories, and components out there.
The company said that wireless charging has managed to become quite popular over the years, but that it hasn’t been up to standard, as the speed and efficiency of wireless charging remained inconsistent. Qualcomm even said that some wireless products that were introduced claimed to have Quick Charge support, while that was not the case, so the company has announced the expansion of its compliancy program in order to include wireless charging pads powered by Quick Charge technology.
The company said that the certified Quick Charge charging pads will work with the same Quick Charge 2.0, 3.0, 4, and 4+ adapters out there, without a problem. At the same time, Qualcomm wanted to welcome the very first component vendor to the Quick Charge for wireless power program, Weltrend Semiconductor.
As part of its expanded compliancy program, Qualcomm will conduct additional testing to ensure Quick Charge and Qi operability. Qi charging includes over 650 member companies and over 3,500 compliant products, and Qi-certified devices include the majority of the world’s top selling smartphones, says Qualcomm, many of which are fueled by its Snapdragon processors.
Qualcomm also said that Xiaomi managed to become the very first company to release a compliant wireless power pad (Mi Wireless Charging Pad), while also emphasizing that Xiaomi has been a long time supporter of Qualcomm’s Quick Charge technology, as a ton of its devices are compatible with Quick Charge.
Quick Charge Has Been Around Since 2013
Qualcomm’s Quick Charge technology has been around for quite some time now, since 2013. Quick Charge 1.0 was announced that year, and it had a max power output of 10W, while a number of Qualcomm’s processors supported it, including Snapdragon 200, 400, 600, and 800 series processors that were released back then.
Quick Charge 2.0 debuted in 2015, with a max power output of 18W, and it was included in the very same Snapdragon series of processors, but next-gen chips, of course.
Quick Charge 2.0 was followed by Quick Charge 3.0 in 2016, and it had a number of improvements over QC 2.0, but it retained the same max power output. Its voltage changed quite a bit, max current as well.
Qualcomm debuted Quick Charge 4 and 4+ in 2017, with plenty of changes in the voltage department, along with some additional improvements. Quick Charge 4+ is the latest iteration of Quick Charge technology, and is supported by Snapdragon 660, 670, 710, 845, and 855 processors. Quick Charge 4+ is still not as widespread as it should be, but that will hopefully change throughout 2019. It is still unknown when will Quick Charge 5.0 land, but Quick Charge 4+ is plenty fast and more than stable enough, so Qualcomm is probably not in a hurry to release its next-gen technology.