MediaTek releases its answer to Qualcomm Quick Charge: Pump Express Plus is available on MT6595, MT6732, others
Qualcomm's QuickCharge technology has changed the way we look at phone charging as it has given a substantial boost to charging speeds, allowing consumers to spend much less time 'wall-hugging' while waiting for their phone to juice up. Qualcomm refined the tech with QuickCharge 2.0, improving speeds further, and this new technology is now practically on all Snapdragon 8xx series of devices.
On the other side of the fence, you have MediaTek, the chip maker from China that has enabled a little revolution in affordable smartphones - its cheaper chips allow to lower the cost without sacrificing performance hugely. However, MediaTek phones so far lacked the boost of QuickCharge tech.
Luckily, MediaTek took notice of this shortcoming, and it is now introducing an alternative to QuickCharge for MediaTek phones that it calls 'Pump Express Plus'.
This rapid charging technology will work with the latest crop of MediaTek silicon including chips like the high-performance MT6595 and the affordable MT6732. Pump Express Plus MTK is said to deliver a 45% boost in charging speeds when compared to traditional chargers. We don't know the details about how it works, but we do know that it does require a special wall charger, and the first such one is the romantically named HF-QC-084 charger with the following specs:
- Regular mode: 5V - 1.67A (for a combined 8.35W)
- Turbo 1: 7V - 1.67A (combined 11.69W)
- Turbo 2: 9V - 1.67A (combined 15.03W)
The first phone to ship with the technology enabled and a compatible charger is the obscure Koobee Halo 3, a phone that you will not be able to get via official channels in the United States or other markets, but that will be available via resellers and Chinese sources.
With expectations to see more and more phones with MediaTek chips, though, this kind of innovation will eventually spread to the US, and that is definitely great news for consumers.
source: Chongdiantou via GizmoChina
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