Your new phone didn't come with a charger, so you run out and buy one from some other
brand that says it supports fast charging. But did you know there's a good chance that it won't
work properly? Because the folks that make our phones, tablets, and laptops haven't agreed on
one fast charging standard, your device might charge more slowly than it ought to. So today,
we're going to tell you how to make sure you've got the right charger and cord.
iPhone and Google Pixel owners will want to pay attention to this first one.
USB power delivery or USB PD for short. As the name implies, USB PD is actually part of the
official USB specification, and some manufacturers have kept things simple by just using USB PD
instead of some kind of proprietary fast charging scheme. But that doesn't mean that all phones
use USB PD the same way. For example, the iPhone 12 Pro Max can pull about 22 watts while charging,
but the 13 Pro Max pulls about 27. More watts means faster charging, so check your phone's peak
wattage than by a charger that provides at least that much power. Just make sure that this USB PD
certified, or you might not get the extra speed. The good news here, though, is that any certified
charger providing enough wattage should work, so you don't have to buy an official one from Apple
or Google and instead can score yourself a sweet deal on a third-party charger. Oh, and don't forget
about the cable itself. A modern, made-to-spec USB-C to USB-C cable should carry at least 60 watts.
But again, double check to ensure it actually meets that USB PD standard. USB PD also supports up to
100 watts for larger devices like laptops, and a 240 watt variant is on the way soon, so it's a great
one charger to rule them all solution if you have compatible devices across different brands.
Qualcomm's Quick Charge is the next fast charging standard we're going to talk about,
and despite the fact that the San Diego Chargers no longer play at Qualcomm's
Stadia in a brutal twist of irony, Quick Charge is still a very widespread protocol used in phones
from Samsung, Razer, ASUS, Sony, Nokia, and LG, if you're still rocking one of those collectibles.
So Quick Charge is a bit faster than USB PD, but it is proprietary. Still, versions 4 and newer are
compatible with USB PD, though you won't get as much speed if you use a Quick Charge 4,
4 plus, or 5 phone with a USB PD only charger due to the extra secret sauce from Qualcomm.
However, you shouldn't need a super special cable as even the newest versions of Quick Charge
are supposed to work with a regular 3A USB-C cable. Qualcomm has promised that you can get a 50%
charge on your phone in only 5 minutes with Quick Charge 5, and although that will obviously
depend on battery size, it's really impressive, especially since Quick Charge has a reputation
for running a little cooler than some of its competitors. But what if you want to go even
faster? One of the quickest standards out there right now is Warp Charge from OnePlus,
formerly known as Dash Charge. Now, there's no chance that you'll find it on a non-one-plus
device, as it's a strictly proprietary standard, and you will need a compatible charger as well
as a special cord. But the upside to all this special equipment is that Warp Charge is fast.
It gives the flagship OnePlus 9 Pro and its 4,500 mAh battery a full charge from zero in just about
half an hour. And if that's not fast enough, OnePlus's parent company, Oppo, has another
charging standard called Super Rook, though there's no word on when that might be available outside of
China. Of course, we'd be remiss though if we didn't also mention Samsung and Motorola's in-house
solutions. Samsung's are called Adaptive Fast Charging and the newer Super Fast Charging and
are only for Galaxy devices. The former max is out at 18 watts and the latter is at 45 watts, so
it's quick. But with the way it's currently implemented, it's not going to give the full
60 plus watts that USB PD would, even though Super Fast Charging is compatible with the USB PD standard.
If you want the highest speed Super Fast Charging has to offer, you'll need a certified charger
and a cable as it uses a relatively high 5 amps of current. On the Motorola side, they use a solution
called turbo power. While it's not as fast as some of the other standards we've mentioned,
the good news is that it's actually a variant of Quick Charge 3.0. For low wattage turbo power
devices, any adapter that supports Quick Charge 3.0 should give you full performance,
though if you're using the higher wattage versions, make sure you've got a charger that
supports Quick Charge 4 plus or higher. Hopefully now you'll have a better idea of what you'll need
to keep your phone powered up in a pinch or you can just disregard everything I said and
stop forgetting to plug it in before you go to sleep because then you wouldn't need to put charge.