Faster Phone Chargers Explained - Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,415 words · ~7 min read
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Cell phone chargers. They're all basically the same, right? You plug it into the wall, you throw a USB cable on
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it, then you plug it into the the lightning or micro USB or whatever other
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connector there is on your phone and call it a day or night if you charge
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your devices at night, which would make sense because well, look, never mind that. The point is, easy, right? Wrong.
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now to learn more. So, four years ago,
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life was relatively simple, at least as far as 5V chargers for phones and
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tablets went. You had your USB ports on your computer or very low-end wall warts
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that output 500 milliamps. the typical ones and the ones bundled with your
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phones which were usually 1 ampish and premium aftermarket ones and the bundled
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ones with tablets which were usually two or 2.1 amps. Now even in those days
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though you sometimes needed interoperability between your charger
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and the device being charged in order to take advantage of the best possible
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charging rates because beefier componentry is required to prevent the
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device and/or its battery from being damaged by the charging process. So
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phone manufacturers like Apple and Samsung used little signaling tricks
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that would allow their chargers to communicate with their devices to let
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them know, hey, it's okay to draw more power. Fast forward to 2012 and the
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introduction of Qualcomm Quick Charge 1.0, an attempt to standardize faster
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charging so more customers could leverage it, at least those customers
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whose phones contained Qualcomm processors. Version 1.0 to was all about
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optimizing charge times with 5V 2 amp adapters that you already owned with a
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fancy power management IC built into the device itself. All the user needed to
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know was that his or her gadget was charging faster, especially when it was
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very low. Version 2.0, 0 which started showing up in devices like the HTC 1M8
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in early 2014 takes the ondevice hardware a step further and allows it to
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accept up to 3 amps from a 5volt power
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supply and even other voltages as well up to 12 whoops volts. But the tricky
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thing is that while both the devices and the chargers are backwards compatible
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with older lower power ones to take full advantage of quick charge 2.0 0. We need
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drastically different power sources that can deliver the aforementioned greater
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current and varying voltages. So, if you want to be sure it supports quick charge
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2.0, check the box. It'll say quick charge 2.0 and it'll come with a pretty
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steep price tag for up for a freaking wall wart. So, the question then is, is
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it worth the investment? Well, Qualcomm claims that compared to conventional
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charging, so 5V 1 amp, quick charge 2.0
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0 can fill your battery up to five times more in the same time. And even compared
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to Quick Charge 1.0, it's twice as fast.
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But their results, while surely very scientific, were done on a bare battery
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as far as I can tell, and therefore might not really reflect exactly the
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results we'll see in the real world. So, I brought this test to the real world,
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suckers. I used a Nexus 6 from Google, manufactured by Motorola, and tested it
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in four different scenarios. First, with an Apple 1 amp charger that I've had
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since I got my iPhone 4. Second, with a 2 amp wall wart that I got with the
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Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Third, with the
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quick charge 2.0 charger included in the Nexus 6's box. And finally, with a
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third-p party quick charge 2.0 0 charger from Pure Gear to see if the rated
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current at the various charging voltages makes a difference on this device anyway
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since they're actually a touch lower than Motorola's bundled turbocharger.
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Maybe that contributes to Pure Gear's smaller size as well, actually. Now,
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before beginning, I needed a testing methodology. Obviously, I couldn't just
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power down the phone and plug it in and stare at it until it was finished. So,
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here's what I did. I ran a 3D game with the flashlight on to drain the battery
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until the phone powered off. Then I plugged it in briefly, powered it back
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on, and let it sit at the home screen until it reached 3%. Any lower and it
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would shut down again. I put it in airplane mode and closed all apps except
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for battery monitor widget, which I configured to pull the battery level
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once every minute. Because a big part of the benefit of quick charge is not
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necessarily the overall charge time to 100% but rather the charge time to go
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from empty to a reasonable level when you're desperate. And we need more plot
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points than just start and end in order to get that. So to ensure we were
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getting the best possible experience, a 1 ft microB USB cable was used since the
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cable length can have an impact on charging power. And I ended up with the
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graph that you see here. Each charge test was run twice to ensure that
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nothing weird happened. So, I consider these results accurate to within plus or
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minus a few percent. And overall, I learned a few things. Number one, quick
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charge 2.0 is faster than other solutions. Number two, most 2 amp
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chargers out there, you can see I have quite a few of them here, are either
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incapable of handshaking with many devices and enabling faster charging
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rates, or they just plain suck. Most of
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them topped out around 1.5 amps. Number
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three, all the 1 amp chargers I have lying around deliver more than 1 amp,
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including the Apple one that I used for my benchmarks, which was the closest to
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1 amp out of the bunch. And number four, thanks to Qualcomm standardizing this
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stuff, a third-party quick charge 2.0
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charger will deliver basically the same results as a firstp party one, something
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that hasn't always been the case in the past with proprietary standards. So,
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Cool Beans, faster charging is good, right? I mean, it's not quite as fast as
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I was hoping, but it's definitely faster. Actually, not always. It's great
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if your phone is almost dead and you've got a blind date in half an hour and you
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need to make sure you can, you know, text your friends from the dinner table
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if it's not going well. Or if it is going well, he's so wonderful. Uh, but
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juicing up your battery with a higher current charger generates more heat,
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which can negatively impact the battery's overall lifespan. how many
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charge and discharge cycles it can handle. And given that so many batteries
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are non-replaceable these days, this is a bit of a concern. So, whenever you're
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plugging in for the night, even though you have support for quick charge 2.0,
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I'd recommend sticking with a lowspeed charger. So, thanks for watching, guys.
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Like this video if you liked it. Dislike it if you thought it sucked. Leave a comment if your feelings were more
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complicated than this. Let me know what were you expecting out of all of this.
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