Alternative to USB-Power Delivery: Qualcomm® Quick Charge Technology

Every user of portable devices dreams to recharge batteries much faster preserving the battery life and integrity. Driven by this market demand, many charge solutions are entering the mobile market with new technologies, outstanding performances and different levels of standardization and complexity.

In my blog, I already posted a lot about USB Power Delivery. This is for sure the solution offering the highest level of standardization, flexibility and performances. But at the moment no product available and the related ecosystem (cables, connectors) not yet available.

In competition with USB Power Delivery, the Qualcomm® Quick Charge technology constitutes a simpler and viable alternative. Using the USB port, this technology enables a simple but efficient way to negotiate the voltage, the delivered current and the power limits between battery device and charger.

 

Currently Qualcomm offers a family components based on the 1.0 Quick charge version and up to 70 products are ready to manage this technology with  dedicated PMIC.  The 1.0 version delivers up to 2.5A with a proprietary negotiation on the USB port pins to Automatic Power Source Detection (APSD) and Automatic Input Current Limit (AICL). The second generation (2.0) is a step forward in terms of power performances and additional features to improve robustness and flexibility, in primis the Automatic Input Voltage Detection (AIVD) and High Voltage Dedicated Charging Port (HVDCP) . In this case you can deliver up to 60W to recharge the battery of your portable device.

Qualcomm says “We anticipate that devices and wall chargers with Quick Charge 2.0 will be available for purchase by early 2014; all smartphones and tablets with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor will have Quick Charge 2.0. Snapdragon 800 processors are an entire system-on-a-chip and feature a CPU, GPU, DSP, LTE Modem and much more, enabling UltraHD video, high-end 3D gaming, 7.1 surround sound, and up to 55 Megapixel image captures, so being able to quick charge means less time charging and more time doing!“.

Partner of Qualcomm on this technology, Power Integrations announced recently the CHY100,  a Quick Charge 2.0 solution to cover wall charger and AC/DC applications. Next post will be dedicated to this device in order to better understand the Quick Charge 2.0 standard from device specifications.