What is Dash Charge Charging Technology in the OnePlus 3, Hints at OPPO’s VOOC

Update: We earlier exclusively reported that OnePlus would be using OPPO’s proprietary Super VOOC Flash Charge technology on their latest flagship model, OnePlus 3, which was just announced today. It is the same technology that OnePlus’s parent company announced at MWC that they’ll be using on their upcoming handsets. While earlier it looked like the young Chinese mobile startup would use it, but with announcement of new flagship they are going the separate way. As the company has introduced Dash Charge technology on the new OnePlus 3 smartphone.

Now that it is confirmed OP3 is sporting a USB Type-C port, which was kind of obvious as the company introduced Type-C on the OnePlus 2 smartphone last year. If you didn’t know, the OP2 didn’t support fast charging despite the Snapdragon 810 having Quick Charge feature. To follow up on that shortcoming on last year’s flagship model, the brand decided to go its separate way and introduce their own fast charging technology.

OnePlus & OPPO Partnered for Fast Charging?

With OPPO’s expertise in fast charging technology using VOOC technology they have created a benchmark in owning in-house fast charging. While even there are various companies that have managed to create fast charging on their in-house processor as well, for instance, Samsung offering adaptive charging on Exynos processor powered Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. It shouldn’t have been hard for OnePlus to develop a fast charging technology on their own since OPPO might have helped them, as the company is directly linked to being a part of it.

While it is too early to say anything concrete about the Dash Charge technology, we know that this is a proprietary fast charging technology developed in-house by the company, as they recently applied for the trademark in the United States Patent and Trademark Office. You can see here in the listing. It may be possible that OnePlus developed DashCharge technology in partnership with OPPO. Thus, there might be elements of Super VOOC technology used on this feature.

What is Dash Charge technology?

Talking about the specifics of the Dash Charge technology, it uses 5V 4A for a 3000mAh capacity non-removable battery. Note that the Type-C port that is present on OnePlus 3 is a 2.0, but not 3.0. The company touts a Day’s power in just half an hour, which technically means that device, gets charged to 60% within just 30 minutes. That is clearly one of the fastest charging claims and is even faster than Samsung’s Note 5 claim of 50% battery in 30 minutes. The company states that users should only charge the OnePlus 3 with proprietary Dash Charge adaptor to get these results. Moreover, the brand claims that the device doesn’t heat up during charging. We would definitely like to test that claim as almost every Android smartphone heats up during charging. So, let’s see how practical this claim is.

The reason for being so much faster in charging is that Dash Charge produces a larger electric current rather than increasing pressure. Thus, it allows a stable, consistent charging speed, even if the device is being used for high-intensity activities like gaming. Carrying more current than at lower temperatures makes it much safer and cooler than any other fast charging technology. There is a heat dispersion system element added in the Dash Charge Adaptor, which empowers it to manage any heating issues before it reaches to the device.

You’ll be surprised to see so much promise and innovations have been made this time towards the battery technology. Dash Charge allows five layers of protection to safeguard the adaptor, cable and phone itself. Note that adaptor and phone are equipped with a temperature regulation system, which is said to prevent any kind of overheating. Moreover, there is a failsafe measure to ensure that you get fast charging without any worry. The five layers of protection can be seen in the image above.

Why not Quick Charge 3.0?

Why didn’t OnePlus just used Snapdragon 820’s support of Quick Charge 3.0 since it supports a broad range of connectors including USB Type-C? Well, if you take our opinion on this, we think the primary reason for not using that technology might be that Indian government hasn’t allowed of importing the Quick Charge 3.0 enabled adapters in the country as they haven’t got the BSI ratings required in the country to sell the electronics product.

If you recall, Xiaomi Mi 5 and LG G5, which are recently launched handsets. These handsets support Quick Charge 3.0, but the company is not offering the 3.0 supported Chargers in the Indian retail units for above handsets. It looks like OnePlus has found a way around to offer equally if not much faster-charging technology than Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0. We would know more about it once we start using the OnePlus 3 smartphone.

Earlier, May 4, 2016 : OnePlus will be launching its upcoming flagship OnePlus 3 in the next couple of months. Recently we got to know about the device specifications, thanks to the benchmark listings. The device comes with a Full HD display and Snapdragon 820 quad-core processor. It is also rumored to launch in two variants with 4GB RAM + 32GB Storage and 6GB RAM + 64GB Storage.

Today the device with the model number A3000 got the 3C certification, and the charging standards of the device are now revealed. The device will be accompanied with a 5V/4A power adapter. The OPPO’s Super VOOC adapter comes with the same specifications of the OnePlus 3 as revealed by the 3C certification. It uses the low voltage pulse-charge algorithm for maintaining low temperature to ensure the battery safety.

Oppo had unveiled the Super VOOC Flash Charge technology at the MWC 2016 in Barcelona. According to the company this new technology can charge a 2,500mAh battery from 0% to 100% in just 15 minutes. OnePlus had also applied for the trademark of “DashCharge” which is expected to be its own fast charging technology. Apart from the trademark information, there are details about DashCharge.

The Super VOOC Flash Charge needs customized battery along with adapter and cable. We guess the partnership between OPPO and OnePlus can be quite interesting since Pete Lau and Carl Pei had worked at OPPO before launching OnePlus. There also few sources that the OnePlus is funded by OPPO. Last year’s flagship OnePlus 2 came with Snapdragon 810 octa-core processor but didn’t include the Quick Charge technology.

Now with the OnePlus 3, the company is likely to stay away from Qualcomm’s Quick Charge technology. In case, if OnePlus 3 launched Oppo’s VOOC technology then we can expect few more manufacturers to collaborate with Oppo. While there is no trusted to back this, we can confirm only when the OnePlus 3 is officially launched. As the device is announced to launch in Q2 2016, we expect it to be made official by the end of June.