Qualcomm details Quick Charge technology - almost a year after launch

Posted on 15 Feb 2013 at 11:02, by Gareth Halfacree

Qualcomm has released details of the Quick Charge technology built into the company's latest Snapdragon system-on-chip processors for smartphones and tablets.

Designed to make portable devices charge their batteries significantly faster than before, Quick Charge was originally developed by Summit Microelectronics which Qualcomm acquired in June 2012. Since then, the company has been integrating it into the power management circuitry of its tablet and smartphone products. Devices with the feature are already available in the market - making us question why Qualcomm chose today to make the announcement.

According to Qualcomm, the LG-manufactured Google Nexus 4 smartphone, which uses the company's SnapDragon S4 Pro quad-core processor, already includes Quick Charge 1.0, along with other handsets including the HTC One S, the Nokia Lumia 820 and 920, the LG Optimus G, the US version of the Samsung Galaxy S3 - but not, sadly, the international model - and numerous other devices listed in the official announcement.

In each case, Qualcomm claims the technology reduces the time it takes to charge the device from flat to full by up to 40 per cent. The only smartphones and tablets with Quick Charge at present use Qualcomm processors, but the company is also working on a stand-alone circuit which connects to the USB connector on any rechargeable device - the progress of which could be indicated by today's announcement.

With the often poor battery life of modern smartphones being one of their biggest drawbacks - an unfortunate by-product of powerful multi-core processors and large touch-screen displays - technology like Qualcomm's Quick Charge will become increasingly important and we wouldn't be surprised to see the system used in the majority of devices launched this year.

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