Would my cable work on my wife’s phone?

Would my cable work on my wife’s phone?

Q My wife’s Alcatel phone takes well over three hours to charge. Apparently Alcatel considers this normal. My Poco F3 smartphone charges really quickly, so I’m wondering if I could use my Poco charger to charge my wife’s phone, assuming I can find the appropriate connecting cable.

Fred Gibson

A You can certainly use your charger to charge your wife’s phone, but if you’re expecting it to be quicker, we’re afraid you’ll be disappointed. The Poco F3 comes with a high-power 33W Xiaomi charger (pictured below) that, although the manufacturer doesn’t shout about it, conforms to a standard known as Quick Charge (QC) 3.0.

A key benefit of the QC standard is that, as well as offering fast charging, it’s backwards compatible – both with older versions of QC and older phones generally. Circuitry in the charger detects whether a phone is compatible with QC and, if so, which power level it supports. If it doesn’t detect QC compatibility, the charger drops down to the lowest charging speed to avoid damaging the phone’s battery.

Although we don’t know which model of phone your wife has, we’re not aware of any current Alcatel phone that supports QC charging. So, yes, you can use your Poco F3’s QC charger to charge your wife’s phone – but it won’t be any faster than using the charger Alcatel provided.