Back in mid-September, Qualcomm announced Quick Charge 3.0. Which charges your phone even faster than Quick Charge 2.0, which was already really fast. Qualcomm said that it was 38% more efficient than Quick Charge 2.0 and twice as fast as Quick Charge 2.0. Qualcomm also stated in their announcement on September 14th, that the Snapdragon 430, 617, 618, 620 and 820 would feature Quick charge 3.0. Now just because Qualcomm has it baked into these processors doesn’t mean that it’ll be baked into the phones that these processors power. We saw that with the LG G4 earlier on in the year.
The HTC One A9 was just announced today and features the Snapdragon 617. So naturally we had to ask if the HTC One A9 features Quick Charge 3.0. And according to HTC’s Twitter account (during their Q&A about the new device this afternoon), the HTC One A9 does include support for Quick Charge 3.0. While the HTC One A9 does support Quick Charge 3.0, it does not come with a Quick Charge 3.0 charger in the box. So you will have to pick up a compatible Quick Charge 3.0 charger. Luckily there are some available on Amazon already. Additionally, Quick Charge 3.0 is backwards compatible. So if you have a Quick Charge 2.0 adapter, you can also use it to charge your One A9 pretty quickly.
It’s unfortunate that HTC is not including a Quick Charge 3.0 adapter in the box with the HTC One A9, but their reasoning is pretty sound. As it was to keep the price of the new flagship low. Which it is priced at $399 unlocked and off contract. It’s also available today for pre-orders through HTC.com. Sprint and AT&T will also be carrying the device, as they announced intent to carry earlier today as well. The HTC One A9 may look a lot like an iPhone, but it does pack quite a punch for the amount of money it’s priced at. Currently we are unsure of when the One A9 will be available outside of the US, as HTC only said “worldwide beginning the first week of November” which isn’t that far away. But it’s also not that descriptive either. As soon as we know more, we’ll be sure to share it with you.