​Qualcomm’s New Charging Tech Gets a Phone to 80 Percent in 35 Minutes

Qualcomm announced that the third iteration of its Quick Charge feature, which the company says can charge a phone from 0 to 80 percent in 35 minutes, will be available for phones next year. The charging technology works by modifying voltages on different charge levels, reducing power loss and making sure the phone doesn't overheat during the process.

That's a little over twice as fast as what traditional wall chargers can output to phones like the iPhone 6S. The feature will only be available to devices with select Snapdragon processors—Qualcomm has a list if you want to check.

Smartphones have become that omnipresent, feature-filled extension of ourselves, but they have one Achilles' heel: they're only useful if as long as they can stay alive. And with each cycle of bigger power-hungry screens and features, relatively little fanfare is given to the battery shouldering the burden of powering the thing—that can make the difference between anchoring you to an outlet or not all day.

It might not beat having a two-day battery capacity, which we can only pray manufacturers would value enough to pour research dollars into, but it's so much better than being tethered in one place for a few hours.