Battery life is one of the biggest headaches in tech — but while capacity remains a problem, manufacturers are at least making big improvements to charge times. Like Huawei, whose new experimental set-up can take a dead battery to 48 per cent change in about five minutes.
The Chinese smartphone manufacturer has developed a lithium-ion battery with a graphite-coated anode that can withstand the stresses of incredibly fast charges. Its 3,000mAh prototype — which is about the size of battery you’d find in a large smartphone — can be charged by 48 per cent in just 5 minutes. It also has a much smaller 600mAh battery that can be charged to 68 per cent in 2 minutes.
Recently, Qualcomm announced that the third iteration of its Quick Charge technology, which will be baked into its 2016 chips, will feature a new Intelligent Negotiation for Optimum Voltage algorithm that can charge a dead phone to 80 per cent of charge in just 35 minutes. It’s unclear how sophisticated the charging software in use by Huawei is.
Currently, the Huawei set-up is bulky and requires a special charger, both of which would need to be addressed before it found its way into a real product. There’s no word about if or when the new Huawei battery hardware may become a commercial reality.
[Huawei via Computerworld via Engadget]
Image of the Huawei-produced Google Nexus 6P, which doesn’t feature the charging hardware.