Beside unveiling the Snapdragon 617 and 430 chipsets, and its brand new X12 LTE modem, Qualcomm also introduced Quick Charge 3.0. 

Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0 is a very popular feature with almost every major flagship device featuring support for it. The feature allows supported devices to charge from 0-60% after being charged for only 30 minutes.

With Quick Charge 3.0, Qualcomm is pushing the boundary even further and promises that it will charge devices up to 4x faster than conventional charging. The company boasts that Quick Charge 3.0 is up to 38 percent efficient than Quick Charge 2.0 and up to twice as fast as Quick Charge 1.0. It also features additional steps to ensure that the battery life cycle is not affected.

The technicalities of this feature, as explained by Qualcomm, is below:

Quick Charge 3.0 employs Intelligent Negotiation for Optimum Voltage (INOV), an algorithm which allows your portable device to determine what power level to request at any point in time, enabling optimum power transfer while maximizing efficiency. It also supports wider voltage options, allowing a mobile device to dynamically adjust to the ideal voltage level supported by that specific device. Specifically, Quick Charge 3.0 offers a more granular range of voltages: 200mV increments, from 3.6V to 20V. That way your phone can target one of dozens of power levels.

So, how fast is Quick Charge 3.0 actually? Qualcomm says that it will allow supported devices to charge from 0-80% in only 35 minutes.

Qualcomm also notes that Quick Charge 3.0 is backward compatible with Quick Charge 1.0 and 2.0. Additionally, it supports a wide range of connectors like USB Type-A, USB micro, Type-C, and even proprietary connectors.

Quick Charge 3.0 is supported by Qualcomm’s next-generation chipsets, including Snapdragon 820, Snapdragon 620, Snapdragon 617, and Snapdragon 430.