Currently, many smartphone manufacturers are equipping their smart phones with a new feature called by many different names such as fast charging, turbo charging, rapid charging or quick charging. This technology charges your battery at a very fast rate giving you more power in very less time. This technology was licensed under Qualcomm quick charge and it does not necessarily require for phone to have a Qualcomm processor to run this technology. Lets explore how it actually works along with its disadvantages over a long run.

To have quick charge technology, the phone as well as the power adapter need to be modified to allow more power. During a quick charge, more amount of power is passed to the phone increasing its intake and therefore charging faster. The Qualcomm has currently introduced 3 generations of chargers and currently Quick-charge 3.0 is latest. From 1.0 to 2.0, there has been an decrease of 50% in charging time and from 2.0 to 3.0, instead of concentrating on power increase, they worked on battery voltage efficiency and developed INOV (Intelligent Negotiation for Optimum Voltage). Quick charge 2.0 bolstered four modes at different power levels, 5 volts/2amps, 9V/2A, 12V/1.67A, and a 20 volt alternative. Speedy Charge 3.0’s INOV speaks with the gadget to ask for any voltage somewhere around 3.2V and 20V at 200mV augmentations, taking into consideration a more extensive choice of voltages. Comparing the 3 versions is a table given below,

To check the disadvantages of this technology, we need to know about Charge rate (C) which is defined as a measure that governs at what current a battery is charged and discharged. At 1C, a battery rated 1,000mAh charges at a current of 1,000mAh. In an ideal world the battery would be fully charged in 60 minutes. At 1C, the same battery discharges at 1,000mA. Similarly a battery rated 1 Ah at 2C is expected to provide 2 Amp for 30 minutes of time.

Batteries which charge at less Charge rate are said to be long lasting compared to the more Charge rated ones and during a normal charge, we use mostly 0.5 to 1 C (mostly 0.8C) and during quick charge, the value of Charge rate varies between 1C and 3C decreasing the lifetime of the battery. The following graph shows the lifetime (number of cycles) of batteries with different charge rates.

source for graph

The most observable disadvantage using quick-charge is heating issue. As the power passed through the battery is more, more amount of heat is generated and phone feels hot very fast. Also, for every cycle the battery doesn’t get completely charged (at most it gives 85% performance of a normal charge) and in a long run, the battery life will be more for normally charged phones than quick charging ones. The comparison can be drawn out from the graph already mentioned. All in all, use quick charge only if you have to or else use normal charging methods.