Redmi Note 8 Pro teardown confirms Quick Charge 3.0 support

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The Redmi Note 8 Pro was launched alongside the Redmi Note 8, the RedmiBook laptop and 70″ 4K Redmi TV at an event in China yesterday. While leaks, as well as official teasers from Redmi themselves, had practically confirmed most features of the device, like the MediaTek G90T SoC, before the launch of the phone, Xiaomi still had a few surprises tucked inside the launch event. One surprising announcement was that the Redmi Note 8 Pro would not only support MediaTek’s Pump Express fast charging solution, it also comes with support for Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0, Quick Charge 4+ as well as USB Power Delivery. Now, Redmi has posted a teardown of the device, which confirms support for Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 at least.

One of the presentation slides at the launch event mentioned that the Pro variant of the new phone comes with support for multiple charging protocols and is compatible with several leading chargers. The Redmi Note 8 Pro features the new MediaTek Helio G90T SoC, so support for MediaTek’s Pump Express technology was expected. Pump Express 4.0 is also said to be compatible with USB Power Delivery 3.0, so its presence on the slide could also be explained.

What was surprising was the mention of the Qualcomm’s proprietary fast-charging solutions in the form of Quick Charge 3.0 and Quick Charge 4+. This meant that the phone would need additional hardware to be able to support these solutions. Thankfully, Redmi has posted a teardown of the Redmi Note 8 Pro which partially backs these claims.

In the image above, you can spot the Qualcomm SMB1351 which is a Quick Charge 3.0 Battery Charger IC. This means that the Redmi Note 8 Pro contains the requisite hardware to enable this standard at least, despite the difference in SoC (presuming Xiaomi has supported this IC with relevant changes in their kernel and ROM).

However, we were unable to spot any hardware that would explain the claims for Quick Charge 4+ support. The phone should have come with either the Qualcomm SMB1380 or SMB1381 power management IC in order to support this new tech. We are unable to explain this discrepancy at this stage, but we hope Xiaomi clarifies this claim.

If you are interested in the other internal parts of the Redmi Note 8 Pro, you can check out the rest of the teardown below:

The teardown also showcases the liquid cooling heat pipes inside the phone. We also spot support for microSD cards, a detail that we had missed in yesterday’s launch presentation.