Vivo recently took to Weibo to tease its new Super FlashCharge 120W technology and evidently, it’s crazy fast. Justin Jian, a product manager working at the company’s subsidiary iQOO, shared a video clip which shows the phone going from around 10 percent to nearly 13 percent in just 16 seconds. At present, no charging technology can fill up a phone’s battery at this pace.
Vivo claims that the Super FlashCharge 120W technology can fully charge a gargantuan 4,000mAh battery in just a matter of 13 minutes. Currently, best that the Chinese company offers is 44W charging, which is supported in its iQOO gaming-centric smartphone. This technology takes nearly 45 minutes to top up a 4,000mAh battery completely.
Vivo might officially announce the Super FlashCharge 120W technology during next week’s MWC Shanghai. However, it’s unlikely that a Vivo handset will support it anytime soon and for now, it’s just show-and-tell. Super fast charging creates a lot of heat and the current smartphones do not have the thermal balancing and safety features required to merit the use of such a technology.
However, it appears that companies are slowly making progress in this area and it wouldn’t be long before ultra-fast charging becomes commonplace. Not too long ago, Xiaomi also teased its 100W charging standard. With that technology, it will take just 17 minutes to charge a 4,000mAh battery to full capacity.
Other companies are making leaps in charging technology too. For instance, OPPO’s Super VOOC charger takes just 35 minutes to replenish the 3,400mAH battery of the Find X Lamborghini Edition, making it the fastest solution in the market currently.
OnePlus Warp Charge 30 reaches 30W, as the name implies, and Huawei’s proprietary SuperCharge technology supports up to 40W charging speeds. And then, you have the chipmaker Qualcomm, which has its own fast charging technology.
The current Quick Charge 4.0+ standard, which supports max power of 27W, lets a 2,750mAh battery go from empty to 50 percent in less than 15 minutes. It goes without saying that this technology has nothing on what Vivo has teased and once the Chinese company’s technology is commercialized it will easily thrash competition. Up next, Qualcomm has a Triple Charge system planned, which will support 32W fast charging.
By the looks of it, Qualcomm is kind of cautious when it comes to charging solutions and it’s not hard to see why. The company’s standard is one of the most widely implemented ones in the industry and it seems more interested in ensuring that power delivery and heat is managed properly.
Back to Vivo again, the company has also started teasing a 5G device, which is most likely its first 5G phone. It is expected to be revealed during the upcoming MWC Shanghai. The company has already developed a 5G phone based on the NEX S and even if it does announce an actual 5G phone next week, it won’t begin shipping until next year. Right now, 5G networks have only gone live in a handful of places, so most consumers won’t be buying one this year anyway.