In recent years, with the continuous improvement of the performance of mobile phones and the increasing dependence of people’s lives on mobile phones, the demand for fast charging is also increasing. On July 19, 2022, iQOO released iQOO 10 Pro, which is the first mobile phone to break through 200W fast charging. From the initial 5V1A charging to today’s 200W fast charging, the charging power of mobile phones has been increased by nearly 40 times. .
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When it comes to fast charging of mobile phones, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have quite a lot of experience. Compared with the poor charging speed of foreign mobile phone manufacturers, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have already taken mobile phone fast charging to the extreme. The charging power of 120W, 150W or even 200W allows domestic mobile phone users to experience what is the real fast charging.
Samsung, the best-selling mobile phone brand in the world and the number one in global shipments for many years, has only 45W charging power for its flagship mobile phone, and most mobile phones of other brands only support 27 or 30W fast charging. There is also Apple, which everyone is very familiar with. Even the iPhone 14 series launched not long ago has only a maximum charging power of 29W. In stark contrast, the “backward” 65W fast charging that is standard on some thousand-yuan phones today can also allow users to experience the joy of filling their mobile phones within half an hour.
Why are domestic manufacturers obsessed with the continuous development of fast charging technology? That’s because in order to meet the load requirements of 5G, large screens and processors, smartphones are bound to carry larger and larger batteries. However, from the current point of view, the battery capacity of the mobile phone cannot be greatly increased in the volume and weight of the mobile phone, and it is difficult to achieve a substantial increase in the energy density in a short period of time. In order to solve the “power anxiety” of many consumers, mobile phone manufacturers can only find another way to operate fast charging, and reduce users’ perception of battery life by shortening the charging time.
As a domestic consumer, when it comes to fast charging of mobile phones, many people may think of the advertising slogan “Charge for five minutes, talk for two hours” that used to be popular in the streets and alleys. As a pioneer of fast charging of mobile phones in China, OPPO’s fast charging was definitely a breakthrough in the past, and it also let more people know the OPPO brand. In order to achieve fast charging, OPPO’s VOOC flash charging uses a low-voltage and high-current charging solution. In the same period, Qualcomm’s early fast-charging solution (which has serious heating problems) also uses low-voltage and high-current. protrude.
In addition to low-voltage and high-current fast charging solutions, mobile phone manufacturers such as Huawei and Xiaomi at that time adopted high-voltage and low-current fast charging solutions.
In general, the problem of low voltage and high current is that there are higher requirements for wires and interfaces. The most obvious is that the charging cables provided by OPPO are relatively thick to adapt to larger currents. But the disadvantage is that the versatility is poor, and third-party chargers cannot achieve full-speed fast charging. On the other hand, the problem of high voltage and low current is that the efficiency is low and the heat generation is large. The advantage is that Qualcomm QC MediaTek PE is a general protocol, so the compatibility is relatively good.
Today, with the development of technology, the era of choosing between current and voltage is gone forever. “Children only make choices, and mature ‘I’ certainly want all of them.” With the addition of the scheme, the common choices for fast charging of mainstream smartphones are high voltage and high current.
Before introducing the fast charging technologies of major mobile phone manufacturers, we first need to understand the most compatible mobile phone fast charging protocols. Some mobile phone private protocols are also improved from these technologies.
PD protocol
The PD protocol refers to the USB-PD protocol, which is a fast charging protocol proposed by the USB-IF organization. The full name is USB Power Delivery, which can theoretically reach 100W. In addition to mobile phones, many laptops and other devices also use this protocol. Everyone should be familiar with the USB interface. Almost all charging cables have a USB interface at one end. Whether it is Apple’s lighting or type-C, everyone uses the USB interface, so they have to follow their standards. Therefore, The fast charging protocol must follow the PD protocol.
QC Protocol (Qualcomm)
The Qualcomm QC fast charging protocol is a fast charging technology developed by the well-known chip company Qualcomm for the Snapdragon processor. The full name is Quick Charge. As the leading big brother of mobile phone chips, Qualcomm has integrated the fast charging protocol in its own chip manufacturer for a long time. Because the PD fast charging protocol is compatible with the QC protocol, some mobile phones with non-Qualcomm processors can also support the QC fast charging protocol.
PE Protocol (MediaTek)
The PE protocol was launched by MediaTek, and its full name is Pump Express, which is characterized by allowing the charger to determine the initial voltage required for charging according to the current. Although they are both chip manufacturers, except for Meizu, the PE protocol is rarely supported by mobile phones. It is much more difficult to find a suitable charging head than the Qualcomm camp.
Now let’s take a look at the fast charging technology of major mobile phone manufacturers.
OPPO
In the mobile phone industry in 2014, when the charging power was generally still 5W, OPPO’s self-developed VOOC flash charging technology increased the charging power by 4 times, and opened up the era of mobile phone fast charging through technological innovation. The fast charging technology of OPPO mobile phones has always been one of its signatures, but OPPO is relatively late in the mass production of 100-watt fast charging. However, the OnePlus Ace Pro released in the first half of the year was equipped with a long-life version of 150W super flash charging technology for the first time.
The longevity version 150W super flash charging technology can charge from 1% to 50% in 5 minutes (4500mAh battery), and charge to 100% in the fastest 15 minutes. The reason why it is called the “Longevity Edition” is that it uses a self-developed battery health engine to realize that the mobile phone battery can still have 80% of the capacity after 1600 cycles of full charging and discharging, and the battery life has reached twice the industry standard.
In addition, at the 2022 MWC World Mobile Communications Conference, OPPO also released 240W super flash charging technology, which also means that, as a pioneer of mobile phone fast charging, OPPO once again proved its strength to the world, and it has the momentum of the return of the king. .
vivo
The vivo series uses FlashCharge, and the subsequent iteration version is SuperFlashCharge. This is a high-power fast charging technology adopted by vivo brand mobile phones. Like other fast charging technologies, it can achieve shorter charging time through higher charging power. Due to the exclusive protocol used on the chip side, it cannot be used in charging heads and mobile phones of other brands or that do not support this fast charging technology.
vivo has taken a different and unique path from OPPO and Qualcomm – multi-charging IC design. Generally speaking, a mobile phone only has one built-in charging IC to control the charging process, while vivo adds an additional charging IC system, which is equivalent to having two charging systems charging the battery at the same time.
Vivo’s iQOO has the fastest charging speed on the market. As the first commercially available 200W fast charging mobile phone, iQOO 10 Pro announced that mobile phone fast charging has officially entered the 200W era.
Huawei
Huawei has always been different from other domestic manufacturers in terms of fast charging protocols. It uses its own proprietary protocols SCP and FCP. The full name of SCP is Super Charge Protocol, and the full name of FCP is Fast Charger Protocol. SCP is also the fast charging protocol that Honor is currently using.
The FCP protocol that was born in the early days adopts a high-voltage and low-current solution. After 2016, Huawei launched a new SCP protocol, which adopts a low-voltage and high-current solution similar to OPPO. The advantage is also to increase power while reducing heat generation. Later, on the basis of this agreement, Huawei added charge pump technology to reduce the charging voltage to about 5V, while increasing the current from 4A to 8A, which also achieved 40W super fast charging.
In addition, 65W super fast charge has also appeared on Huawei Mate X. At present, the fastest charging speed supported by Huawei’s mobile phone products is 100W, and the model equipped is the Huawei nova9 Pro released in September last year. The 4000mAh battery can be charged to 100% in 20 minutes.
Millet
MI ChargeTurbo flash charging technology is launched by Xiaomi for Mi series mobile phones and is suitable for Xiaomi and Redmi mobile phones. Like other private agreements, it is also necessary to use the original charger and data cable to achieve the best fast charging effect. It is worth noting that because Xiaomi’s fast charging data cable adopts a magic modification scheme, only the original Xiaomi data cable can be used. Support Xiaomi’s high-power fast charging, such as the 120W ultra-fast flash charging currently used by Xiaomi MIX4 and Xiaomi 12 Pro.
However, Xiaomi’s models using Qualcomm Snapdragon processors all have good support for the Qualcomm QC fast charging protocol. Xiaomi has been closely following Qualcomm’s fast-charging technology research and development progress, and began to turn to the PD camp after Qualcomm and PD gradually merged. The current fast-charging technology is based on PD’s PPS supplementary protocol magic modification, which is compatible with PD fast-charging mode to a certain extent. Therefore, when using third-party chargers, Xiaomi mobile phones can often activate the 27W fast charging mode of PD 3.0.
Summarize
We have taken stock of so many fast charging solutions, but in terms of consumer experience, the rapid development of fast charging technology can indeed bring us an excellent experience, and also greatly relieve power anxiety. However, the fast charging technologies of various brands are often private protocols and are not open to the public. For users, the private protocol is not a good thing, which means that unofficial chargers can only activate low-power charging, which is not only much lower than the dedicated fast charging mode, but even much slower than the iPhone.
However, recently, led by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Huawei, OPPO, vivo, and Xiaomi, together with Silicon Lijie, Rockchip, Lihui Technology, Angbao Electronics and many other terminals, chip companies and industry partners, a new project has been completed. A generation of fusion fast charging protocol – UFCS fusion fast charging protocol is about to be officially launched. Although the protocol currently only supports up to 40W fast charging, and there are not many models supported, it is always a good thing for the public to take the first step. Maybe the day of “one charging head will go all over the world” is far from us. Far.