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All colleagues unite and focus their efforts to write a new chapter of developmentThe Evolution of Chargers: From Quick Charge 1.0 to Quick Charge 4.0, and the Differences Between QC 2.0 and QC 3.0
所属分类： Industry News
发布时间：2020-05-15
Fast-charging technology is advancing by leaps and bounds,
Charger In today’s fiercely competitive market, Qualcomm’s Quick Charge technology continues to dominate. Now in its fourth generation, each iteration has brought groundbreaking advancements. The rapid pace of upgrades—from QC 1.0 to QC 4.0—has inevitably left many consumers voicing their frustrations.
Precisely because Qualcomm, as a seasoned leader, has been accelerating ahead at full throttle, its product‑iteration pace simply can’t keep up, resulting in devices equipped with QC 1.0, QC 2.0, and QC 3.0 technologies coexisting in the market. It’s akin to issuing a new series of banknotes while the old ones remain in circulation—understandable—but claiming that people are still using Kangxi Tongbao coins is hard to justify! So, just how significant are the differences between QC 1.0 and QC 4.0? Let’s compare them below.
Back in the Nokia era, an 800 mAh battery could easily last two to three days, so a 5V/0.5A charger was more than sufficient—charging would take just two or three hours. If Nokia really did rule the world, there’d be no such thing as QC fast charging.
After 2010, large‑screen smartphones—led by Android devices—became ubiquitous, and battery capacities soared, with 2,000 mAh becoming the standard (today, top-end models exceed 6,000 mAh). If charging still relied on 5 V/0.5 A, it would amount to “two hours of charging for five minutes of talk time,” so boosting charging power became essential. How much should it be increased? Let’s start with 5 V/1 A. But that still fell short; the USB‑IF chimed in: “How about 5 V/1.5 A?” Still too low. At that point, Qualcomm weighed in: “We’re going for 5 V/2 A.” And thus, Quick Charge 1.0 was born.
QC 1.0: Voltage and current are increased to 5V/2A, reducing charging time by 40%.
As technology advanced, large‑screen smartphones surged in popularity, but their battery life struggled to keep pace. Fast charging thus became one of the key strategies manufacturers used to enhance user experience, leading to the emergence of QC 2.0.
QC 2.0: Compared with the previous standard, QC 2.0 represents a groundbreaking shift in charging voltage, increasing it from the long‑standing conventional 5 V to 9 V, 12 V, and 20 V. While maintaining the same 2 A current as QC 1.0, it delivers up to 18 W of power, and no special cable modifications are required—existing cables remain fully compatible.
Increasing the voltage boosts power, but efficiency drops. For every one‑step increase in voltage, efficiency declines by roughly 10%, with most of that lost energy dissipated as heat. As a result, the 20V setting is rarely used, leaving only 5V, 9V, and 12V as the standard options. Even so, the devices still run uncomfortably hot. Qualcomm eventually concluded that stepping directly from 5V to 9V was too large a jump, leading to inefficiencies, so it introduced fine‑tuning in 0.2V increments to pinpoint the optimal voltage. But what’s the ideal voltage? Qualcomm has developed its own proprietary Intelligent Negotiation for Voltage (INOV) algorithm—this is Quick Charge 3.0.
QC3.0: Building on the two voltage levels of QC2.0—9V and 12V—QC3.0 further refines the voltage steps, employing a proprietary INOV algorithm that sets voltage increments of 200 mV, with a minimum as low as 3.6 V and a maximum of 20 V, while remaining backward compatible with QC2.0. By fully adopting the USB Type‑C connector in place of the previous Micro‑USB, the maximum current has been increased to 3 A. With lower voltages, efficiency improves by up to 38%, charging speed increases by 27%, and heat generation is reduced by 45%.
QC 3.0 is certainly great, but Google didn’t agree—how could Qualcomm go its own way? If you’re using my ecosystem, you have to adopt the USB‑PD protocol. You can’t outmaneuver a bigger player, so Qualcomm relented and rolled out QC 4.0.
QC 4.0: Power has been further increased to 28 W, and USB PD support has been added. The 12 V voltage level has been removed; the 5 V output can now deliver up to 5.6 A, and the 9 V output up to 3 A, with voltage steps refined to 20 mV per step.