Introduction to mobile phone fast charging protocol! What is PD compatible?

With the development of the times, we all rely more and more on mobile phones.
The capacity of the battery has changed from a few hundred mAh in the past to three or four thousand mAh today.
However, as the screen becomes larger and more functional, the battery consumption is also faster.
Battery manufacturers are working hard to increase energy density and capacity, while chip manufacturers are looking for low-power solutions to save power, but neither is easy to achieve. In front of all manufacturers, the only way is to increase the charging speed.

A long time ago, everyone was still using the standard 5W charging power of 5V 1A. At that time, the battery was small and the charging speed was very slow. According to the power calculation formula of physical knowledge, Power = Voltage x Current. There are only two options to increase the power, increase the charging voltage or increase the charging current.

The fastest popular fast charge protocol is the Quick charge, referred to as the QC protocol, launched by the mobile phone chip giant Gaoneng.
The Qualcomm QC1.0 stage increased the original 5V 1A to 5V2A, and the charging power was doubled from the original 5W to 10W. In the QC2.0 stage, it is limited by the micro usb interface. Since the Micro USB interface only supports a current of up to 2A, Qualcomm chose a high-voltage, low-current method for the fast charging solution. QC2.0 broke the conventional 5V standard output voltage and increased the voltage to a level that can support up to 20V.

After various considerations, mobile phone manufacturers mostly use 9V 12V high-voltage solutions. With a current of 2A, there is a charging power of 18W or 24W. The advantage of this solution is that only conventional charging cables are required. It can be used with a high voltage charging head. The problem is that when the 12V power reaches the mobile phone, it needs to be stepped down on the mobile phone to the 4.2V that the mobile phone battery can accept, and a lot of heat will be generated during the process of reducing the voltage on the mobile phone. This is the main reason why the fast charging of early mobile phone products heats up. Heat means there is a loss of energy. This charging conversion rate is only about 80%.

VOOC flash charging, represented by OPPO, uses a low-voltage and high-current solution. This solution does not require voltage reduction on the mobile phone, and there is no serious heat generation during charging. The technical barrier is how to break through the 2A current limit of the Micro USB interface. OPPO has physically patched the micro USB port, adding extra contact pins designed to carry high currents. The battery is also specially customized, with as many as eight contacts, which can make the maximum current reach 4.5A, and the voltage remains unchanged at 5V. A power transfer of more than 20W is also achieved. The advantage is that the mobile phone does not have serious charging and heating. The charging conversion rate can be as high as 90% or more. It is precisely because of this technological innovation that OPPO has the classic slogan, charging for five minutes and talking for two hours. The disadvantage is that the compatibility is poor, and it is necessary to carry this customized data cable and charging head with you to achieve fast charging.

With everyone’s demand and awareness of fast charging, many mobile phone manufacturers or chip manufacturers have launched their own fast charging solutions. For example, MTK’s PE protocol, Qualcomm’s QC protocol, OPPO’s VOOC flash charge, Huawei’s FCP protocol, etc. With so many different solutions, some require special chargers and special cables, which also brings a lot of inconvenience to consumers.

An international association called USB-IF has stood up. This is a non-profit organization, and they vigorously promote USB POWER Delivery, also known as the PD protocol. At present, mainstream mobile phone manufacturers have PD fast charging protocols.
It also includes Apple, and is backward compatible with some previous charging protocols. And the PD protocol uses Type-c as the only designated interface, which can reach up to 20V 5A, which is 100W of charging power. It can charge laptops, game consoles and other devices, and a set of chargers can do it all.

Having said so much theoretical knowledge, you may ask, what is the maximum charging power of my mobile phone? What protocol charging head and cable should I buy? Let’s start with Apple’s products that everyone is most concerned about. In addition to supporting Apple 2.4A charging protocol, iphone 8 and above products also support USB PD protocol for the first time. iPhone XS or Iphone SX MAX products support up to 18W power, half an hour Charge 50%. Iphone 8 only supports up to 12W power. Products like the Ipad pro support up to 35W charging power. You can buy a charging head that supports the PD protocol, and you also need a C to L fast charging cable. For example, our IDEAL now sells this kind of charging cable and PD charger.

Huawei’s latest flagship P30 Pro uses HUAWEI Supercharge fast charging, which supports a maximum charging power of 10V 4A and a maximum of 40W. In terms of charging speed, charging 70% in half an hour is quite good. If we use the charging head and line of the PD fast charging protocol to charge it, the maximum power is only about 15W. Compared with the official wire charging power, the gap is larger.

VIVO’s IQOO mobile phone also has its own fast charging protocol, but VIVO did not give this fast charging a loud name and directly called it 44W super flash charging, using a new charge pump technology with a conversion rate of up to 97%, and FFC technology. Realize 11V 4A high-power 44W fast charge, 85% charge in 30 minutes. However, fast charging is limited to official chargers. This mobile phone equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chip only supports 5V 2A power of 10W when using a charger compatible with the QC protocol.

Among these fast charging solutions on the market, the one with the highest charging power is the OPPO Super VOOC super flash charging, which supports 10V 5A as the official description is more cautious, and the highest power is close to 50W. We tried to test the charging time of the Reno at hand. This mobile phone only supports VOOC 3.0 5V 4A with a maximum charging power of 20W. If you want to experience a mobile phone that supports 50W power, you need the previous generation R17 Pro or Find X super flash charging version.

Finally, let’s talk about Xiaomi Mi 9. The official Charge Turbo fast charging supports 9V 3A, the maximum charging power is 27W, and the charging power is 60% in half an hour. At the same time, Xiaomi Mi 9 also supports QC and PD protocols. The charging speed of the three protocols is similar. It can be said that it is currently the most compatible. The charging protocol for flagship phones now. You can choose a more affordable charger to charge Xiaomi 9 according to the price.

Well, the above is the basic introduction to the fast charging protocol of mobile phones, I hope it will be useful for you to buy charging accessories.
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