We have talked about Silicon Carbon batteries before, and they are great. They are more dense than the kinds of battery technology we have been using in our smartphones all this time.
That high density allows manufacturers to either use a higher capacity battery in the same size phones as before, or release much thinner phones with the same capacity as we’re used to.
Chinese manufacturers chose the former, for the most part, and are running with it.
For years, most mainstream Android phones have had about 5000mAh batteries, and that has been enough to last us full days.
We have had gaming phones with about 6000mAh, but that tended to make the phones bulkier, and these were rather niche phones.
That all goes out the window with the new Silicon Carbon batteries.
This very month, just a few days ago, we got three crazy announcements.
Realme GT7
This budget phone was announced on the 23rd of April, and its claim to fame is its 7200mAh battery. That is a huge battery there, and yet the phone is just 8.3mm thick. Contrast that with the Galaxy S24 Ultra, which is 8.6mm thick with its 5000mAh battery.
When you consider that the GT7 has a very efficient processor (Dimensity 9400+), this thing will do 3 days no trouble, methinks. The S24 Ultra can do one and a half days without sweating, so you can imagine what the GT7 will do.
The battery experience gets even better when you consider that the GT7 can charge at up to 100W, which means it can be topped up faster than the smaller Galaxy.
All this for a phone that costs about $355. Amazing stuff.
Xiaomi Redmi Turbo 4 Pro
This one, announced on the 24th of April, takes it even further. It packs a whopping 7550mAh battery.
Guess what — it’s even thinner than the last one too, hence thinner than the S24 Ultra too. It is only 8mm thick, and yet somehow packs a 7550mAh battery that can be topped up at 90W.
What’s crazy is that this Snapdragon 8s Gen 4-powered phone can be had for about $275.
Honor Power
This phone, which was announced on the 15th of April, takes it all to the ridiculous. It packs an otherworldly 8000mAh, if you can believe it.
In all this, remember that the S24 Ultra has a huge 5000mAh cell, while the iPhone 16 Pro Max has a 4685mAh one.
Don’t get me wrong — those two flagships have very good battery life. However, imagine the kinds of battery lives these two beasts would have if they had 8000mAh batteries.
What’s annoying is that the technology already exists, and they absolutely could have championed this. However, it probably still costs more than the Li-ion we were used to, and so here we are.
This Honor Power — appropriately named, by the way — is powered by a low-end processor, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, and that allows the phone to come in at about $275, like the Xiaomi above.
Now, if Honor can turn a profit selling $275 phones with 8000mAh batteries, then we really should be getting that in every single phone more expensive than that.
Anyway, that’s it. The Chinese are pushing the envelope with these massive batteries, and one can only hope the rest of the market follows suit soon.
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