14 DAY TRIAL // As we said the other day, batteries have become an important focus of scientists and tech companies. Qualcomm is now adding its support to the movement aiming for better power packs.
There is a certain technology that Qualcomm has invented, which promises to improve the speed of battery charging by almost half.
More specifically, the technology enables batteries to recover all their energy at a rate 40% better than normal.
The name of the tech is Quick Charge 1.0 and will make a fine stepping stone until the new ones, with a 10-minute recharge time, go live.
Quick Charge 1.0 is offered as part of the PMIC, or power management integrated circuit in devices powered by Qualcomm processors.
The solution interfaces with the USB port (universal serial bus) and optimizes the process. Over 70 Snapdragon-based gadgets currently use the spec.
No special equipment is needed for the feature to come into play. Normal USB charging accessories are fine.
Overall, this is a very different way of promoting energy efficiency, and increasing the marketing appeal of mobile items, than the regular one.
Like so many other corporations, Intel included, Qualcomm normally attributes the longer battery life spans to the efficiency of the SoC or CPU.
It is similar to how NAND Flash storage device makers praise the low power requirements of flash cards, flash drives and SSDs (solid state drives) in comparison to hard drives.
Qualcomm's goal in suddenly revealing Quick Charge 1.0 has a lot to do with phones, but it could be meant to secure more tablet design wins as well.
With NVIDIA's Tegra 4 not expected to come out until July, and slates based on it in August, it could score a few contracts between now and summer 2013.
We are fairly certain Qualcomm's rivals will outline power efficiency technologies of their own sooner rather than later.