Qualcomm Announces Quick Charge 5 with SMB1396/SMB1398: PD-PPS Up to 100W – AnandTech

Today for Quick Charge 5, Qualcomm is once again altering the charger and PMIC architecture to be able to quadruple the charging speeds, enabling up to 100W of charge power.

The QC5 platform permits of approximately 20V input voltage. Basically with a basic lithium cell charge voltage at ~ 4.4 V, doubling this up with the assistance of the dual-serial cell architecture to ~ 8.8 V, and permitting for just a single switched-cap 2:1 conversion phase inside the phone, a battery charger might output ~ 17.6 V at around 5.6 A to be able to attain 100W charging. Thats still typically more than what the majority of cable televisions will support, so most likely Qualcomms peak figure here would be only in an ideal scenario. Any basic cable managing up to 3A would easily support up to 53W charging.

The charge circuits of the brand-new PMICs permits a 3-level conventional buck converter together with a 2:1/ DIV/2 changed cap converter to supply an estimated maximum conversion performance above 98%. (To be able to keep a 40 ° C temperature level, a phone can just dissipate 3-4W maximum in my experience).

Todays newest Quick Charge 5 because sense is a development of whats used by the USB-PD PPS requirement (To note: QC4 was currently certified with PD-PPS, although not actively using it as the voltage adjustment procedure), completely benefiting from the voltage series of the specification to provide power to approximately 100W.

In terms of gadget and device compatibility, while the above matrix seems relatively complex, its rather basic, as a gadget will just only charge as fast as a provided adapter allows, and fast-charge capability is merely divided into QC procedures (QC< 4). More recent QC 4+ a 5 battery charger will still support the exclusive legacy procedures and enable quick charging of such gadgets. Essentially, one big change throughout the years for Quick Charge as a branded fast-charging requirement from Qualcomm is that starting with QC4.0 the business has actually switched over from their own proprietary charge settlement procedure (Essentially what Quick Charge originally was), to the USB-PD (Power shipment) standard, with the item branding being more of an overall accreditation platform along with charge service on the part of the phones internal charge architecture. Mobile phones still using single battery cells will see benefits in charging thermals and speeds, although Qualcomm here specifies that usually these will be limited to around 45W peak power. Today Qualcomm is announcing a new industrial fast charging service in the type of Quick Charge 5, making the most of the most recent innovation developments in charging circuits and leveraging the USB Power Delivery Programmable Power Supply (PD-PPS) standard in order to accomplish charging powers of approximately 100W. This in turn enables a doubling of the input voltage into the phone, bypassing or minimizing an important limitation to power delivery in a USB gadget: the cable itself, which just supports up to 3-5A on many cables. The constraint inside of a phone is heat dissipation, with Qualcomm here utilizing a 40 ° C charging temperature as its own self-imposed constraint as to how hot a gadget can get. Most of this heat is created by the PMICs inside the phone as the battery itself doesnt in fact get warm throughout charging. The good aspect of QC5 and the fact that it uses PD-PPS as its underlying protocol, is that you dont in fact need a QC5 battery charger to be able to charge your gadget at QC5 speeds. A generic PD-PPS battery charger with the correct voltage and present range will be adequate and would be fully suitable. OPPOs current iteration of their fast-charging systems leverages USB PD-PPS as the protocol, with adapters supporting up to 20V 6.3 A, essentially making it standards certified and must in theory be fully certified with any QC5 gadgets, or vice-versa any newer OPPO gadgets must support QC5 adapters, leaving the only genuine proprietary and troublesome piece of tech being any special cables that support the greater >> 3A currents.

The second part of Quick Charge 5 is not so much the charging adapters or the interaction protocol itself, but the charging architecture within the phone. Qualcomms huge new addition with the new SMB1396 switched-cap converters and new SMB1398 battery PMIC is the fact that theyre architected to support two battery systems, suggesting dual-cell batteries that are linked in series. The advantage of using this technique is that it raises the charge voltage of the system to double that of a single battery cell– going from example 4.4 V to 8.8 V.

Overall, Quick Charge 5 doesnt bring anything naturally new that wasnt currently presented by some of the more aggressive Chinese vendors to the marketplace such as OPPO, however it does it in a welcomed standards compliant method via PD-PPS, and also using the commercial device-side PMIC architecture to permit these new crazy-high charge speeds.

Weve all recognized with Quick Charge and its various implementations over the years, innovating beyond the classical USB power shipment limits of 5W over 7 years back. Over the last few years, weve seen the optimum charge speeds constantly improve, going from 10W in Quick Charge 1.0, to 18W in 3.0, to up to 27W in current 4.0-certified battery chargers which make usage of USB-PD.

I asked the business if battery innovations and chemistries have advanced to the point where utilizing such high charging speeds will not break down capability retention of the cells, and the response was “yes” although lacking any information or specifics. In discussions with other independent industry sources typically its agreed while there have been enhancements throughout the years in lithium cell innovation, these current generations of extremely high-wattage charging comes mainly at an expense of increased battery deterioration, which is why Im still very sceptical of these current charge standards, and why I see large vendors such as Apple or Samsung not engaging in this race.

QC5 doesnt determine suppliers need to use 2S battery layouts, and its likely that the bulk of suppliers will not use them due to included battery volume overhead of using two cells (Less total capacity), along with the reality that theres included discharge inadequacy due to having to convert from a higher operating voltage (~ 8.4 V vs 4.2 V) throughout usage, likewise indirectly decreasing the usable energy capability of the batteries.

In a USB PD-PPS option, the charging architecture modifications more essentially as we see some voltage regulation relocation from inside the phone on the part of the internal PMICs, to inside the actual battery charger which now is of higher complexity and versatility in terms of voltages that it can provide. This is one part of QC5 and what PD-PPS enables to achieve higher charge speeds, by moving some of the conversion loss from inside the phone to inside the battery charger.

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The second part of Quick Charge 5 is not so much the charging adapters or the communication procedure itself, however the charging architecture inside of the phone. The advantage of using this technique is that it raises the charge voltage of the system to double that of a single battery cell– going from example 4.4 V to 8.8 V.

Basically with a basic lithium cell charge voltage at ~ 4.4 V, doubling this up with the help of the dual-serial cell architecture to ~ 8.8 V, and enabling for just a single switched-cap 2:1 conversion stage inside the phone, a battery charger might output ~ 17.6 V at around 5.6 A to be able to accomplish 100W charging. Any standard cable television managing up to 3A would easily support up to 53W charging.

The good thing about QC5 and the truth that it utilizes PD-PPS as its underlying procedure, is that you dont really require a QC5 battery charger to be able to charge your gadget at QC5 speeds.