The smartphone scene has seen a huge number of changes in the recent past as phones have grown larger, thinner, and now they are becoming foldable. What has also been part of these changes is the ever-increasing charging speed of these mobile handsets.
It is a cut-throat competition with manufacturers trying to outdo each other, with each phone release claiming to have the fastest charging device in the market. Next up is Xiaomi.
On November 15th, Xiaomi unveiled its “HyperCharge” technology to the global audience. The Chinese company had already carried out a trial in China last year with the Mi 10 Ultra, and it is now sending the innovative charging system to the whole world.
The HyperCharge technology refers to Xiaomi’s in house technology of charging a mobile phone using a 120W charger, a first of its kind in the mobile scene.
The new Xiaomi 11T Pro has a 120W charger, a substantial power increase from the 55W charger present in the Mi11. For comparison, the Mi11 can charge to 100 percent in just 45 minutes, while early reviews are putting the 11T Pro’s charging time at a range between 17 and 21 minutes.
How does Xiaomi’s HyperCharge fast charging work?
“It’s like having two different inlets to fill the gas in your car and two separate tanks. Now, rather than filling at a certain slow rate on one side, you can fill up two at the same time. This is all done on the side of the phone, the charger outputs 120 watts and rather than trying to push the maximum of five volts, a single channel splits it into two, three, four channels. This allows us to increase everything — everything is done at 20 amperes.” explained Desjarlais, international head of communications and global spokesperson at Xiaomi to The Verge in an interview.
Does fast charging reduce longevity of the battery?
Xiaomi also claims the battery will degrade at a normal rate as other smartphones, even if you exclusively use the fast charging option.
“This is something that we’ve really, really heavily tested. Generally, for this level of charging with the batteries that we’ve tested it with, after 800 charging cycles you’ll still have 80 percent battery health. Now, that 20 percent might sound like ‘oh wow, I’m losing 20 percent,’ but that’s quite standard across basically all charging tech. 800 cycles, for most people, it’s going to be two years roughly. So that’s quite solid.” Desjarlais went on
For comparison, Apple tells customers to expect a lithium-ion battery to retain “up to 80 percent of its original capacity at 500 complete charge cycles.”
Conclusion
Now that Xiaomi has laid down a marker with what I am expecting to be a flagship killer, you can expect more manufacturers coming up with a similar solution for their handsets. Unless they follow Samsung’s or Apple’s way of dropping charging bricks with the release of new devices, which would be a shame.
Closely following the 120W HyperCharge system, Xiaomi already has a prototype 200w system that filled a 4,000mAh battery in just 8 minutes.
The Chinese company however has not commented on whether the system will come to commercial phones, but the best guess is it will, when the competition comes with a product that will rival what Xiaomi currently has in the market.
Kenyans typically consider fast charging as an added bonus but not necessarily crucial in deciding which device to buy, as most of us tend to charge devices overnight, therefore rendering the fast charging part more or less useless. But a time comes when you need to leave your house in 10 minutes and your phone is at 2%.
Comments 2