Oppo's 65W AirVOOC takes just 30 minutes to wirelessly charge a phone

Oppo

It’s only been three months since Oppo started offering its 40W “AirVOOC” wireless charging tech on its Reno Ace 2,but today,the company is already teasing a faster,more powerful 65W upgrade. With the same 4,000mAh dual-cell battery,Oppo claims that its upcoming 65W AirVOOC is able to reduce the charging time from the previous 56 minutes to just 30,thus matching its wired counterpart aka “SuperVOOC 2.0.” This also beats the 40W wireless charging from Xiaomi and Huawei,making it the fastest wireless charging tech to date. Well,when Oppo eventually brings this to an actual product,that is.

The main enabler of this crazy-fast 65W AirVOOC is its parallel dual-coil design — with an output of 20V/2A and 20V/1.25A,respectively — on both the phone and charger. It does mean that the phone has to be placed vertically to take in all 65W of power,but a horizontal placement still does 25W charging. And yes,this charging tech is compatible with Qi standard,too. Oppo also had to find ways to optimize the operating frequency of the coils,in order to avoid interfering with the phone’s communication signal.

Oppo

To ensure safe and stable charging,the phone’s temperature is kept under 40°C or 104°F (when in a constant 25°C or 77°F environment),courtesy of the charger’s built-in semiconductor cooling system (leveraging the Peltier effect) under the coils. This is apparently more effective than blowing air at the phone like many other fast wireless chargers do.

That said,there is also a fan in the charger’s base for both sucking air in from the charging plate’s top (thus dissipating the heat from the semiconductor system),as well as cooling the management circuit in the charger’s base,with hot air being exhausted from the back of the base. There are other safety measures such as foreign object detection,along with the usual five-fold safety protection from the VOOC tech.

Oppo

In addition to its latest wireless charging breakthrough,Oppo also unveiled a 125W (20V/6.25A) flash charge tech (not based on VOOC at this rating; more on that later). This charges a 4,000mAh battery from zero to 41 percent in just five minutes,or from zero to 100 percent in just 20 minutes. It may sound less appealing than Vivo’s 15-minute charge with its 120W “Super FlashCharge,” but it’s still a whole 10 minutes faster than Oppo’s very own 65W SuperVOOC 2.0,which is already impressive with its 30-minute charge time.

Despite this boost in charging power,Oppo claims that this new “6C” battery will maintain an 80-percent capacity after 800 cycles,thanks to its upgraded structure and optimized charging algorithms. In terms of safety measures,this 125W flash charge design also keeps the phone temperature at under 40°C or 104°F,and this is monitored by a total of 13 sensors inside the phone (and one in the charger). Hardware encryption is in place to ensure that only certified cables can take in the maximum current available.

The new charger carries a USB Type-C interface (finally,a first for Oppo),and it also features three parallel charge pumps (each carrying 42W of energy) to convert the 20V/6.25A power to 10V/12.5A for the phone’s battery,with a conversion efficiency of up to 98 percent. Thanks to the tighter component integration and stricter temperature control,this charger is just slightly larger than the existing 65W SuperVOOC 2.0 charger.

Even though this charger only does PPS (Programmable Power Supply,a protocol by USB-IF) for the full 125W delivery,it is also capable of 65W SuperVOOC or 30W VOOC,both of which benefit from low voltage and therefore lower thermal properties. On top of that,you also get 65W USB-PD and 36W QC here.

Oppo

Oppo didn’t stop there. The company also decided to work on miniaturizing its chargers,which resulted in this 50W mini SuperVOOC charger. Thanks to a new topological design sans bulky electrolytic capacitors,this new GaN charger comes in at around the size of a business card holder,so it can be easily put in a pocket. When used with a SuperVOOC-compatible phone,this device can fully charge a 4,000mAh battery in 42 minutes,which isn’t too bad. Better yet,this charger also supports other protocols like 27W PD and 50W PPS,meaning it can juice up some laptops and tablets.

Using a similar design,Oppo also built a 110W mini flash charger,which is impressive given that it’s about the same size as a conventional 18W charger. Through its 110W PPS protocol,this device can charge a 4,000mAh battery in just 20 minutes,though it likely has a slower initial charging speed than the aforementioned 125W charger. Much like its 125W counterpart,the charger is also compatible with Oppo’s very own 65W SuperVOOC and 30W VOOC,along with 65W PD and 36W QC.

Oppo

To date,Oppo has over 30 smartphones featuring some form of VOOC flash charge,and apparently over 157 million users have been using this technology. There’s no word on when any of these upcoming charging tech will be entering the market,but given previous patterns,chances are we will see a related announcement as soon as next month. Other ambitious smartphone brands may come up with something even better in the mean time,though,especially when the next wave of 5G phones are about to become even more affordable and aggressive.