The smartphone industry is eyeing a rather innovation-heavy year ahead, one that could bring us more capable cameras, useful AI deployment, and newer form factors. Another welcome advancement is a possible shift to dramatically bigger batteries fitted inside phones. It should, thankfully, be a rather open approach to battery innovation and extend from flagships down to the budget segment.
According to a reliable leaker posting on the Chinese microblogging platform Weibo, a Xiaomi sub-brand could put a massive 7,500mAh battery inside one of its budget phones later this year, and the phone in question is likely to be the upcoming Redmi Turbo 4 Pro. We’ve recently looked at the Redmi Note 14 Pro Plus, which has a 5,110mAh cell inside.
Moreover, there are murmurs of an even bigger 8,000mAh battery being in the test phase at Xiaomi. The same source also mentions that with the increase in size, users won’t necessarily lose out on the fast charging perk, adding that up to 100W charging is still possible on these mammoth battery units.
The tech facilitating this massive jump in smartphone battery capacity is a silicon-carbon hybrid as the anode material. Or, to put it more specifically, a Silicon Carbon Composite (SiC) as the anode material compared to the traditional usage of graphite.
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Silicon, when deployed as an electrode, can store ten times as many ions, which brings a massive gain in the electrochemical energy density. As a result, one can make denser batteries with a higher capacity in a smaller package. It also opens the door for faster charging, and the material itself happens to be available in abundance.
Redmi won’t be the first brand to take advantage of the battery breakthrough, though it certainly looks primed to set a new record. Honor kicked off the trend in 2023 with the arrival of its Magic 5 Pro flagship. The most recent addition to the brand’s line-up, the Magic 7 Lite, further upped the ante with a 6,600 mAh battery. Elsewhere, the Red Magic 10 Pro has a massive 8,080mAh battery with 100W fast wired charging support.
The Realme GT 7 Pro also relies on a silicon carbon battery, and the same tech has allowed OnePlus to fit a 6,000mAh battery inside its latest flagship, without sacrificing its fast charging mojo across wired and wireless modes. The excellent iQoo 13 matched its OnePlus rival at an even lower asking price. Vivo was another Chinese brand that served a silicon-carbon battery on its camera-centric X200 Pro smartphone.
Rumors suggest 8,000mAh batteries are not too far off into the future. And if the likes of Realme and Xiaomi’s Redmi label are anything to go by, we may not have to pay a fortune to experience the benefits of this landmark innovation.