It’s been a busy week for Qualcomm.
The semiconductor company on Thursday debuted the latest generation of its Quick Charge technology – and it certainly isn’t anything to sniff at.
Now in its fourth iteration, the updated technology offers a 20 percent improvement in charging speed and up to a 30 percent improvement in efficiency. In the real world, that translates to five hours of battery life in just five minutes of charging.
“As mobile devices become more capable and feature rich, people tend to use them more. That’s why consumer demand and awareness for fast-charging solutions is now at an all-time high,” Qualcomm Technologies Senior Vice President of Product Management Alex Katouzian said. “Quick Charge 4 addresses that need by providing up to 50 percent battery charge in roughly 15 minutes or less, so you don’t have to spend all day chained to your charging cable.”
The Quick Charge refresh also includes compatibility with USB Type-C and USB-PD, and additional safety protections to prevent battery over-charging and regulate current.
Qualcomm said Quick Charge 4 will be baked into its next generation Snapdragon 835 processor, which is expected to ship in commercial devices in the first half of 2017. The company didn’t disclose which devices are slated to use the Snapdragon 835 chip, so consumers will have to keep an ear perked.
Speaking of Snapdragon, Qualcomm on Thursday also announced a new reward program offering up to $15,000 to anyone who discovers a vulnerability in its Snapdragon processor family, LTE modems, and related technologies.
Administered by HackerOne, the new program invites white hat hackers to test the platform for security flaws. Qualcomm said the initiative is currently an invitation-only affair, with more than 40 security researchers included in the first batch of participants. The company said it will gradually invite additional security researchers to partake.
Specific hardware included in the campaign includes the Snapdragon 400, 615, 801, 805, 808, 810, 820, and 821 chips, as well as the Snapdragon X5, X7, X12, and X16 modems. Software up for investigation includes the Linux kernel code that is part of “Android for MSM” with version 3.14 or newer, privileged user space programs (i.e. running as root or system), bootloader (all boot stages), cellular modem, WLAN and Bluetooth firmware, and Qualcomm Secure Execution Environment (QSEE) on Trustzone.
The reward for each vulnerability will be based on a tiered system that ranges from $0 to $1,000 for “low” security-rated software vulnerabilities to $15,000 for “critical” security-rated vulnerabilities with the cellular modem.
More information about the program can be found here.
