Quick Charge 4+

#1

Less than a year after Quick Charge 4 was officially announced by Qualcomm, they have already announced QC 4+. In fact, there a phone was also announced to be compatible with it. This seems to be getting kinda messy. I don’t know of any devices that support QC 4 (I may be wrong, though. Tell me if you do). I feel like the last thing we need is a replacement so quickly. It seems like a very incremental update. I wonder when Anker will start coming out with accessories that support QC 4 / the new 4+ or if they have no intentions to as Power Delivery may take over. We’ll see!

Read more about the new quick charging technology here. Thank you and have a nice day!

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#2

It is definitely a vicious cycle we live in. My phone is 3 years old and I have seen 4 or 5 charge speed and wireless updates that I can’t take advantage of and don’t need to as my phone charges faster than I can consume it. I suppose the newer phones will have more power demands as technology develops.

I remember when home computers had the problem of becoming outdated weeks after you bought them and now phones and accessories are outpacing the computer.

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#3

So I work in “systems” of I only think of phones, tablets, laptops, chargers and portable chargers and cables as a total integrated system. The reason is I’ve lived off mobiles and laptops now for 22 years and its “all about the charger” and its “all about the battery”. If you lug a charger unique and specific to one device, it then adds its bulk and awkwardness in finding multiple wall sockets. If you are not careful you can end up with a specific charger unique for each device and your devices need equivalent volume of their chargers.

I pretty much can (and do often for months in a year) live out of a 16L backpack and can traverse most situations with all the usual technology. That is only possible with multipurpose chargers with their associated cables. This is why USB and particularly USB-C is the future.

So because there are not QC laptops, I do not have a QC phone. So I don’t have QC. So I don’t care about QC.

Laptops are now USB-C, hence my phone is USB-C and so my usual drum-banging with Anker is more USB-C.

QC is only 18W, it shows no sign of becoming de-facto outside of phones, it is mostly being made popular by a limited set of phone manufacturers like Samsung. Apple is embracing USB-C. Hence basically QC is dead, and it is just the small detail that Qualcomm doesn’t know it yet and those who buy QC phones do not yet know it.

The rub is also Anker is behaving in a QC-first product release, quite lazily slowly embracing USB-C.

There is also no inherent reason for QC chargers, because the phone can contain some Qualcomm smarts and Qualcomm can offer some secret sauce to the phone manufacturer of faster recharge by just using a generic USB-C input, so anything QC related is only inside the phone and we as buyers of charger do not know, do not need to care, and just buy a USB-PD charger. Ultimately it is Volts, Amps, and a port shape and then the electronics in the phone step up/down and manage the battery voltage itself, there is no need to make this a compatibility problem outside of the phone for chargers / cables.

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#4

I agree USB C is the way of the future but I believe the future is being developed again as we speak, always does always will. Remember component cables and DVD players, they were the future and couldn’t be beat not long ago then boom HDMI and Blue-ray made it so I needed an HDMI tv and stereo, etc,etc…now streaming tv… Makes my head hurt that I can’t keep up or afford to keep up. Sure glad they have adapters for my dozen or so micro USB cables when I am forced into USB C

#5

Truthfully, I wonder if the 4+ is really just what the QC 4.0 should have been to begin with. It seems strange to have an update so quickly and maybe the original 4.0 was rushed out.

I do feel that QC will become dated very quickly once companies grasp the USB-C and all of its capabilities. A lot of companies don’t utilize the full functionality of the USB-C but many companies are using 100% of the QC capabilities, which makes the QC more desirable at this current time.

I don’t have a phone with QC or USB-C capabilities right now (I have a note 3) but a lot of people like the Fast Charge capabilities of newer phones. But considering I can use a USB-C to charge a phone OR laptop OR some other devices, it seems that the USB-C is going to be a necessity. Combine this with the statements Google has made about going away from QC and I can see QC phasing out or being forced to adapt to something else entirely.

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#6

indeed and it is even more fatal for QC in what is a cornerstone solution from Anker which is multiport chargers. If you look in detail at QC chargers you have one separate budget for each QC port, but if you look at the non-QC there is a shared power across all ports. This manifests in higher cost and physically larger and if you’re not using all ports you’re lugging idle weight. QC is only a single port to phone type technology.

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#7

I am between Micro and USB-C and i now carry one long USB-C cable and short microB and B to C adapters to get balance of convenience and weight. I have USB-C tablet, phone, and microB portable charger input, BT earbuds, smartwatch.

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#8

Quick charge 4+ will also support PD :slight_smile:

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