Although the sockets at hand are full of chargers released by various mobile phone manufacturers with the new phone, I didn’t expect them to become a “stumbling block” for writing at night.
Yesterday, I walked to the gate of the park after get off work and found that I didn’t bring a computer charger, so I rushed back to my work station and grabbed an 80W fast charger from a certain factory that claims to be able to charge 30% of the battery in 5 minutes. When I got home and was about to plug in the computer and continue to use it, I found that I couldn’t charge the computer normally. The speed was pitifully slow. I could only watch the battery of the computer drop from 20% to 4% a little bit until it was turned off. sleep for a day.
During the daytime meeting, just when the computer’s battery was about to “end of life”, I picked up a 66W mobile phone manufacturer’s charging head that claims to charge 40% of the power in 10 minutes, but it couldn’t be charged again.
Guess which one can charge your laptop (friendly smile)?Source: Photo by Pinwan lzh
The mood at that time was the same as eating instant noodles and finding out that there was no sauce packet, or when I went to the toilet and found that I didn’t bring any paper, I was so anxious.
This embarrassing scene is really deadly.
The “private” protocol is the “culprit”
Why was it rare that a charger with the same interface could not be charged a few years ago?
The reason is that the Micro USB interface was the mainstream configuration at that time. This interface was widely used in small appliances such as power banks, electric toothbrushes, flashlights, and mobile phones in the early days, and most mobile phones at that time were also designed with detachable batteries. Therefore, this interface is actually more used for data transmission, charging can only be regarded as “auxiliary”, and the maximum charging current of its interface is only 2A. For most equipment manufacturers, there is no need to use it on this. fooling around.
With the advent of smartphones, battery capacity has also increased. After the battery is not removable, how to make the mobile phone fully charged in a short period of time has become a technology for mobile phone manufacturers to “show muscles” at that time, so various fast charging technologies came into being.
For example, OPPO launched a Micro USB “magic modification” interface with green contacts at that time. The principle of its function is to realize “fast charging” by adding contact pins and using its own charging head. This kind of fast charging was named by OPPO “” VOOC”, which quickly became popular in the market in 2014 with “5 minutes of charging, two hours of talk”.
But it can only charge specific mobile phones through specific plugs and charging heads, which is actually a “private charging protocol”.
Today, Type-C has become the standard configuration for electronic devices such as mobile phones, and even most computers use the Type-C interface. Although everyone’s “interface” has the same shape, the chargers between various devices cannot be universal. The “culprit” is that the charging protocols of various manufacturers are different.
The early private agreements all used low voltage and high current to increase the output power. The maximum current of Micro USB is only 2A, which can no longer meet the increasing charging needs in the later period. The Type-C interface can “carry” large currents more than the former. OPPO uses “charge pump” technology to increase the conversion efficiency, and halve the voltage, double the current, and how fast the parallel connection is to increase the charging “wattage”.
The FlashCharge and SuperFlashCharge charging technologies adopted by vivo and iQOO also use dual battery charging through dual charge pump and dual cell design.
Huawei is more complicated and can be seen as two stages. The first stage is the QuickCharge technology released with Huawei’s Mate8 flagship mobile phone. The protocol is FCP, but it is very interesting that the FCP protocol and Qualcomm QC2.0 are “public” The agreement is basically the same. It stands to reason that Huawei devices should be able to be charged through the QC2.0 charger, but it is not.
Due to the limitation of patent issues, Huawei later transitioned from the high voltage and low current of FCP to the high current and low voltage through the self-developed SCP protocol, whether it is the later 40W super fast charging or the current 66W charging head, also because of the same Using “charge pump” technology, the charging efficiency is improved.
The charging protocol of Samsung mobile phones can be described as “chaotic”. In the early days, its own high-voltage and low-current AFC protocol was adopted, and then it was compatible with QC2.0, and then canceled. After a period of “complex” adjustment, it was simply on the latest flagship. The “public” PPS protocol is directly used.
In short, the PPS protocol is the abbreviation of the Programmable Power Supply protocol in the USB PD 3.0 standard by the USB-IF standardization organization in 2017. To support this protocol, PD3.0 must be supported, which is a bit “semi-public”, and there is organized endorsement and Qualcomm support, plus the ability to “dynamically” adjust the voltage/current, which can better improve charging efficiency. Not easy to heat up.
In addition, because PPS is still in the development stage, there are not many manufacturers that use it. However, compared with the previous “private protocols”, the PPS protocol charger has good compatibility with QC/PD and has been recognized by some manufacturers.
The high-power chargers of Android mobile phone manufacturers are basically “private” agreements.
Apple’s charging protocol is the most “open”
Where there is “private”, there is “public”.
Among them, the most “extensive” compatibility is the USB-PD protocol, which is updated and released by the USB-IF standardization organization. Google, Apple, and Qualcomm are all its members, and the PD protocol is also Apple’s “only” certified fast charge. Protocol, the current PD3.0 protocol has reached 100W, and it also has good downward compatibility.
Qualcomm’s QC protocol is also a “public protocol”. For example, the latest QC5 is based on PPS, which can achieve power of more than 100W through dynamic adjustment, and has better backward compatibility.
In addition, there is MediaTek’s PE agreement. Because it is too niche, this agreement has been difficult to see in the mainstream mobile phone market, so it will not be discussed.
There are not many manufacturers using the MediaTek PE charging protocol
In fact, Google stipulated in 2019 that Android phones must support the PD protocol in order to support GMS services, but due to domestic environmental factors, those chargers marked 44W, 66W or even 80W on the market, without exception, are “private” “Agreement, on the one hand, for safety adaptation considerations, on the other hand, the PD protocol still has problems with heating and charging efficiency. Considering that manufacturers are still willing to use “private” protocols.
And from a number of Android manufacturers are “learning” that Apple does not attach a charging head and then let consumers spend hundreds of dollars to buy a “private” protocol charging head to “enjoy” the highest treatment, but only for other devices ” From the perspective of “minimum” treatment, it is a bit too ugly to eat.
For devices like Apple that only support PD protocol fast charging, if you use the so-called “high-power” charging heads such as Android, the final result is that you can only charge at the “lowest” power, which is naturally powerless for devices such as Macbook Pro. .
For users like me who have Android systems except for their computers and Macs, I didn’t expect that the charging could be “split” like this except for the system experience. “It’s good to go around the world. Before going out, because the charging head agreement is not unified, “consumption” is halfway.
Not equipped with a charger for the reason of “environmental protection” has little impact on Apple mobile phone users (it doesn’t mean that Apple only has a maximum charging power of 27W), but Android phones do not have a charger, but blindly launch high charging power technology, That’s deadly. In addition to the official standard charging head, although there is a “third-party” charging head with the new technology of “gallium nitride”, it may be smaller in appearance than the manufacturer’s “high-power” charging head.
But it will still lose its existence because Android manufacturers collectively “be a demon” in the “charging” part.
However, this third-party charger has quite good support for Apple, a relatively “Buddhist” brand. It is not mentioned here that major manufacturers like Baseus and Anker have chargers that are “independent” adapted for Apple. . Even ordinary gallium nitride manufacturers can support Apple devices well, and any gallium nitride charger on the market supports the “fast charging protocol” of iPhone and Mac.
Can the charging protocol be “unified”?
For the “fragmented” fast charging like Android, in May last year, the Telecom Terminal Industry Association has released the integrated fast charging standard “Mobile Terminal Integrated Fast Charging Technical Specifications”.
“Technical Specification for Fast Charging of Mobile Terminal Integration” Source: from Zhihu Tang Mai
“Different brands of mobile phones and chargers can often only achieve a lower charging speed. Not only does it seriously affect the user experience of fast charging, resulting in a waste of resources; it also greatly increases the upstream and downstream R&D risks and costs of the industry chain. China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Huawei, OPPO, vivo, and Xiaomi took the lead in launching the “Technical Specifications for Integrating Fast Charging for Mobile Terminals”, and won the support of many terminals, chip companies and companies such as Honor, Silicon Power, Rockchip, Lihui Technology, Angbao Electronics, and Dianku Network. Strong support from industry partners.”
Based on this specification, the Telecommunications Terminal Industry Association proposed the UFCS protocol. The UFCS protocol is the interaction process specification from the charger to the mobile phone, which will be similar to PD3.0, and achieve different power output through multi-speed voltage regulation, and finally can reach a general protocol of more than 200W.
This can indeed reduce the “fragmentation” of charging strategies of different manufacturers, but before Pinwan, why should 64-bit applications be fully popularized on Android phones in 2022? “In this article, there are still fundamental differences in how Android software is finally forced to update to 64-bit. The software part can be “unified” by relying on the replacement of the processor, and for the charging protocol, not only the software system adaptation, but also the software system adaptation must be considered. It is even more difficult to do a lot of tests on the models on the market, and to take into account the interests of all parties. Obviously, it is more difficult.
Use a circle down, or GaN yyds
At present, in the face of such a “chaotic” charging protocol of Android manufacturers, it is still the most reliable to buy a high-power GaN charger that supports more protocols.
Hashtag: smartphone charger charging head
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