Skip to main content

Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 5.0 tops off your phone to 50 percent in just 5 minutes

A little more than three years after Quick Charge 4+ was announced, Qualcomm has finally taken the wraps off of Quick Charge 5.0 – the next-generation charging standard that can power up your device in a matter of minutes. The new standard is expected to be included in smartphones over the next few months, with supporting accessories likely to follow.

Quick Charge 5.0 offers a number of advantages over previous-generation versions of Quick Charge. For starters, according to Qualcomm, it’s the first charging standard to support over 100 watts of power for smartphones.

The result? If you use a Quick Charge 5.0 charger with a compatible phone, you should be able to charge your phone from 0 to 50 percent in only five minutes — and you’ll get your phone up to 100 percent in around 15 minutes.

It’s the first charging standard to support over 100 watts of power for smartphones.

“Quick Charge 5, our fastest and most versatile charging solution, will enable consumers to enjoy their devices for longer periods of time, without worrying about the time required to recharge. We are proud to expand our technology portfolio and make accessible 100W+ charging a commercial reality,” said Ev Roach, vice president of product management for Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

Qualcomm says that the new standard is a massive 70 percent more efficient than Quick Charge 4. And it delivers power 10 times faster than the original Quick Charge 1. That’s while remaining 10 degrees Celsius cooler than Quick Charge 4.

Qualcomm Quick Charge 5
Qualcomm

Quick Charge 5.0 is backwards-compatible, so if you use a Quick Charge 5.0 charger with a phone that supports Quick Charge 3.0, you’ll still get Quick Charge 3.0 speeds on that device.

The new standard is supported by the Snapdragon 865 and Snapdragon 865 Plus, but manufacturers will have to implement the tech for their devices to take advantage of it. In other words, just because you have a phone with a Snapdragon 865, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to make use of Quick Charge 5.0.

We’ll have to wait and see just how long it takes for Quick Charge 5.0 to be supported on a wide scale. Xiaomi has said that it plans on supporting the new standard, but it hasn’t said just when it will do so. Even when phones support the standard, it may take a little longer for accessory manufacturers to adopt it.

Editors' Recommendations

Christian de Looper
Christian’s interest in technology began as a child in Australia, when he stumbled upon a computer at a garage sale that he…
Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 855 chip brings A.I. smarts (and 5G!) to 2019 phones
Benchmark results show Snapdragon 855 destroys previous-generation chip
qualcomm snapdragon 855 news

With improved performance, 5G support, and built-in artificial intelligence, the Snapdragon 855 will be the processor powering a majority of flagship Android smartphones next year. Qualcomm announced the successor to the Snapdragon 845 (which is in most flagship 2018 phones) yesterday at its Snapdragon Tech Summit in Hawaii. Now, the company has shared more details about what we can expect from the new chipset.

The Snapdragon 855 is built to embrace a new wave of technologies expected to arise over the next few years, including 5G, mixed reality, artificial intelligence, and more. In fact, we already know of a phone to feature the new chip -- at the event, OnePlus announced that its next flagship will be the first with the Snapdragon 855. Here's everything you need to know about the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 platform.
Performance
Specs are one thing -- but real-world performance is often another. At CES, a number of outlets were able to get their hands on the Snapdragon 855 reference design for themselves, giving them the opportunity to benchmark the processor in a reference device and see how it performs. And, thankfully, it looks like the device will perform pretty darn well.

Read more
Google just redesigned one of its biggest apps, and it’s bad
Google Chat app on the Play Store.

Google Chat — Google's business-oriented messaging platform that is similar to Slack and Microsoft Teams — just got a big update for its Android and iOS apps. The update dramatically changes how you navigate the app and, uh, well, it sure is something.

Google Chat's mobile app used to be broken up into two pages: Chat (direct messages between you and other users) and Spaces (larger chat rooms for multiple people). As with most apps, you switched between these with a navigation bar at the bottom of your screen.

Read more
The Pixel Watch 2 just got a feature it should have launched with
The Google Pixel Watch 2 resting on a stone fireplace.

Google has heard everyone’s demands and has given in to a highly requested feature that should have already been a thing with the Google Pixel Watch 2: a fully charged notification. Yes, that’s right — you’ll now get a notification on your Android phone when your Pixel Watch 2 is fully charged. Hallelujah!

This new feature should be available starting today via the Pixel Watch app on version 2.1.0.576785526. Google did not formally announce this feature, so it seems to be rolled out quietly (and was first spotted by Android Authority).

Read more