New tech promises five hours of smartphone battery life in five minutes
For those worried about being caught unable to take that perfect Instagram photo, or getting lost without the safety of Google Maps, then fear no more.
A new technology promises to give your mobile a supercharge boost meaning you can get hours of battery life by the time it takes you to read this article.
US company Qualcomm which makes semiconductors and telecommunications equipment for smartphones debuted its new super-fast charging technology dubbed Quick Charge 4 last week.
The company makes chips and other internal hardware bits for a majority of top Android smartphones on the market including handsets for Samsung, LG and HTC.
As the name denotes, it’s the company’s fourth generation of charging technology and offers up a major advance in performance.
“We put a lot of hard work and engineering into new products, and we’re going to deliver what we hope is a much better charging experience from 2016,” Qualcomm’s senior director of product management Everett Roach said at the unveiling.
Depending on the device, the company says Quick Charge 4 will provide phones with five hours of battery life in just five minutes, or up to 50 per cent of a battery’s capacity in under 15 minutes.
The new technology will appear in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 chip, which is expected to launch early next year. So if you want to reap the benefits of super fast charging, you’ll need to look out for phones that use the Snapdragon 835 chip next year — something that has not yet been made public.
The latest version comes at a crucial time for Qualcomm. The global recall of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 due to phones catching fire and reports of dodgy third-party chargers also causing phones to catch fire has seen safety become a matter of paramount importance for smartphone manufacturers.
In fact Google — who has recently entered the smartphone wars with the release of its first device — sought to address the issue by implementing new guidelines for Android manufacturers which included charging recommendations that appear to ban Qualcomm’s Quick Charge tech.
The recommendations called for all phones to be USB-PD compliant — a specification intended to make USB-charged devices safer.
Quick Charge 3 is not, however Quick Charge 4 is fully compliant with Google’s new recommendations.
“Quick Charge 4 addresses that need by providing up to 50 per cent battery charge in roughly 15 minutes or less, so you don’t have to spend all day chained to your charging cable,” Alex Katouzian, Qualcomm’s vice president of product management, said in a statement.
So for those who live in perennial fear of a depleted phone battery, you can expect Qualcomm’s charging technology to appear in Android phones in early 2017.
source: www.news.com.au
, and owners of its latest flagship, the 
You already know about the Note 7′s global recall due to some devices bursting into flames, but the number of potentially affected devices, which 
have claimed was less than 0.01%, may actually be a bit higher.
servers aren't working. There's a reason the popular Niantic Inc. augmented reality game has been freezing, but the issue appears to have resolved itself at least for now.
costs have fallen and capacities have increased, but hard drives have still eked out a win in both categories (at least at price points that consumers are going to pay).
s have closed the gap. Samsung’s new 
is a $1,500 solid state drive that aims to replace your HDD altogether, provided you’ve got four figures to drop on a storage medium in the first place. Samsung’s TLC-based 
combines a 40nm process node with 48-layer vertical NAND (
). Anandtech had a chance to put the drive through a battery of tests and reports that it performs well, even if it doesn’t break any particular new ground beyond price.
prices continuing to fall year-on-year thanks to 3D stacked 
, why bother buying a hard drive at all? In a word: Price. 4TB HDDs currently sell for as little as $100, which puts them in the 2.5 cents per GB market. A 
comes out at $1,500 — 15x as much money, and a cost-per-GB ratio of 37.5 cents per GB. That’s not bad at all for SSDs, which were $1 per GB not so long ago, but it’s still a vast gulf to cross as far as high-capacity drives are concerned. Keep in mind, these are retail prices; manufacturers negotiating with Western Digital or Seagate can undoubtedly get much better deals on a cost-per-GB basis.
s have gradually become more common in lower-end systems, but not as quickly as one might expect. Apple may have moved to an all-
distribution, but most companies haven’t followed suit yet — plenty of systems are still either based on 
s or use cache drives to improve performance without adding much to overall costs. Long term, we still expect SSDs to replace spinning disks for most tasks, but the hard drive still has some life in yet. Meanwhile, if you’re lucky enough to have the money to drop on an SSD and need 4TB worth of storage, the 
looks like a great option.
drives are all in the sweet spot between 2 cents and 2.5 cents per GB if you’re willing to buy white-label (off-brand) drives. These are drives created for the OEM market that aren’t branded by the manufacturer but are sold to OEMs like 
, 
, and other builders. Name-brand drives cost significantly more than the white label drives Newegg currently stocks, but it’s not clear if there’s any performance or reliability differences between these products and other hardware (other than potentially different warranty terms).
goes up against the new 
– both all-metal devices – yes, even the Sony. Up until now, if the smartphone had a metal casing and a glass back, it was a safe bet that it was a
– although 
recently changed that concept. With the new 
series, Sony decided to go with an all-metal design, which did away with another Sony tradition – no more 
The 
still has that ‘Sony look’ and they retained their usual FHD display. The 
is going up against one of the best Nexus devices ever made and even with its unusual hump across the top back, it is a beautiful device. Nexus and Sony owners are fanatics when it comes to the love of their devices so we can expect some ‘difference of opinion’ in the comments section. Before we take a close look at each device, let’s look at some of their similarities.
and 
may very well lead the race. They are not the same physical size, the displays are different in size, the technology, and the resolutions are all different. They both use a Snapdragon processor, but entirely different models, although they do share 3GB of RAM and you can get a 32GB or 64GB variant, but only one offers expandable storage. The camera areas are very different – both are great, but they obtain their results using different parts and pieces. They both have a fingerprint sensor (in the international Xperia X version), a non-removable battery and each offers a rapid charge feature and dual stereo speakers. They have the usual suspects – WiFi, Bluetooth v4.2, GPS, NFC, and a port for charging and data transfer – the new Type-C on the Nexus 6P and a microUSB v2.0 on the Xperia X.
, it will be interesting to see what they do this year. When the massive
came out, many Nexus owners were ‘put off’ by its large size, high specs, and high price tag. So last year when they introduced two Nexus levels – the smaller, more traditional 
and a real flagship, the 
– it was exactly what the doctor ordered. Tapping LG for the 5X and Huawei for the Nexus 6P were also brilliant moves. The Nexus 6P is well-built and comes with an all-metal unibody construction. Any one of the four colors – Aluminum, Graphite, Frost, or Matte Gold will give your Nexus 6P that premium look and the specs are nothing to sneeze at even after eight months.
comes with a large 5.7-inch AMOLED display with a QHD resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels and 518 pixels-per-inch (PPI.) Huawei went with the 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 octa-core processor, v2.1, which is supposed to fix the overheating issues with the original 810. It has four cores clocked at 1.55 GHz and four cores clocked at 2.0 GHz. The Nexus 6P has 3GB of DDR4 RAM and a choice of 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB of internal memory with no means for external expansion.
smartphone could take great photos. It uses a highly rated 12.3MP sensor, laser autofocus, f/2.0 aperture and dual-tone LED flash, but still no OIS. The 
also has a large 8MP front-facing camera (FFC) with an aperture of f/2.4 for selfies and video chatting. The Nexus 6P has a very capable 3450mAh non-removable battery that includes a rapid charge feature via its Type-C reversible plug.
has a few things that the Sony Xperia X does not – it has a great Samsung-built AMOLED QHD display and competes with dual front-facing stereo speakers. It is running pure vanilla Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow and will always get the fastest upgrades possible when new versions come out. Pricing is at only $550 for the 64GB model and offers an excellent value. Sold through Google as an unlocked device, the 
is usable on all major US networks.
for anything but a Sony device – the large top and bottom bezels along with its rather rectangular look are a dead giveaway. Gone are the metal and glass design – but enter a new metal backing that surprisingly looks and feels like plastic. The 
also loses its IP68 certification because of this switch in materials. Sony did make slight modifications to the edges that create a smoother look and make it easier to handle the device. Sony is putting out two versions – a US model that Sony removed the fingerprint sensor, but included in the international version. Sony also bypassed including a top processor and opted for the mid-range Snapdragon 650 hexacore processor.
sports a 5.0-inch IPS LCD Full HD display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels with 441 PPI. The Xperia X uses a mid-range 64-bit Snapdragon 650 hexa-core processor with dual cores clocked at 1.8GHz and a quad-core clocked at 1.4GHz. It packs 3GB of the slower DDR3 memory – limitations imposed by the Snapdragon 650 processor. There is 32GB of internal memory, which is expandable to 200GB via a microSD card.
– with a 23MP sensor with f/2.0, Phase Detection Autofocus (PDAF,) and LED flash – however, according to our review, it did not fare as well when we tested the Xperia X. Sony increased the FFC from 5.1MP to a massive 13MP and gave it an aperture of f/2.0 and 22mm lens for selfies and video chatting. A 2620mAh non-removable battery with Quick Charge 2.0 capabilities supplies the power.
does retain the dual stereo front-facing speakers. Another strange marketing move on Sony’s part, the Sony 
, model F5121, is the US model, and it comes without the fingerprint sensor. However, model F5122, which is the International model, does come with a fingerprint sensor. The saving grace is that both of these models use the same spectrum, so it should not matter which model you use in the US. It measures 142.7 x 69.4 x 7.9mm and weighs in at 153 grams. The full array of colors is White, Graphite Black, Lime Gold, and Rose Gold and the Xperia X will cost you about $550.
. For the same amount of money, you get a bigger and better display, as good or better processor, faster DDR4 RAM, as good a camera, competes with front facing stereo speakers, a larger battery, and the Type-C reversible plug, and pure vanilla Android and the fastest updates possible. It is true that there is no room for memory expansion, but $550 will give you 64GB.
dominates the specifications, is unlocked to work on all major US carriers, and the quickest software updates.