Qualcomm’s 100W charging scheme will go from 0-50 in 5 minutes

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  Qualcomm Quick Charge 5 is out. Here are the slides.

In the constantly incremental march of technology, it's not often you get to call something "revolutionary," but Qualcomm's Quick Charge 5 just might be that. The new quick-charging scheme promises to fully charge your phone in just 15 minutes and go from zero to 50 percent charge in five minutes. When the battery is under 50 percent, it will go up one percentage point every six seconds. Qualcomm is calling it the "World's fastest commercial charging solution," and it will probably change how you charge your phone.

Qualcomm's eye-popping numbers are based on a 4500mAh battery with a stacked cell configuration (called "2S" and "2SnP" in the slides), allowing it to pump 50W into each cell, for a total of 100W of charging power. Qualcomm says the dual-cell battery architecture helps with charging efficiency, which is 70-percent higher and 10C cooler than Quick Charge 4 (which is, admittedly, a three-year-old standard.)

Quick Charge 5 will also support USB-PD, so it should be able to charge even larger electronics at full speed. Qualcomm makes a big deal out of the branding, but really, as a USB-PD Programmable Power Supply (PPS) device, it should be able to negotiate the correct power and charge many non-Qualcomm Quick Charge 5 devices at top speed. There's actually nothing limiting this to a USB cable either. Wireless quick charging is also supported.

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