Qualcomm joins the race for 100w+ wired charging speeds with its new Quick Charge 5 protocol. Qualcomm’s latest charging protocol is a big leap over Quick Charge 4+ as it now pushes charging limits to over 100w. This means that charging a 4500mAh battery to 50% will take just 5 minutes, and it does so while being 10 degrees Celsius cooler and 70% more power-efficient than Quick Charge 4+. Qualcomm claims that it can fully charge a 4500mAh cell in just 15 minutes.
To make it possible, Quick Charge 5 utilizes a dual charging solution, where a 4500mAh cell is split into two 2,250 mAh cells in series in order to safely increase voltage. Aside from dual charging, Quick Charge also supports triple charging as well.
Like fast-charging solutions introduced by OPPO and Realme, Quick Charge 5 is backwards compatible to older Quick Charge protocols, along with USB-PD protocols, so you can use Quick Charge 5 chargers for a variety of devices. Qualcomm even claims that it is safer than USB-PD, as it features 8 levels of voltage protection, 3 levels of current protection, 3 levels of thermal protection and 3 timer protections, plus overvoltage protection at 25 V.
Currently, Quick Charge 5 only supports the Snapdragon 865 and 865+ processors. There are no devices yet that officially supports it as of this writing—like Quick Charge 4+, you need either the SMB1396 or MSB1398 chips to fully support Quick Charge 5.
