How does it do it?
Advertisement
A smartphone battery that goes on for over a day on a single charge might be out of reach of most people at the moment, but one that charges to 48 per cent in five minutes is on the way. Marvellous. Release it already.
Another, smaller-capacity battery can get two-thirds of a full charge in just two minutes.
Huawei also demonstrated a battery with 3000 mAh capability that offers energy density above 620 Wh/L. That’s a powerful punch in terms of how many energy watts are stored in the actual battery pack.
In a test, two batteries, one apparently for a smartphone (3,000mAh) and one for a feature phone (600mAh) were charged up to 10x faster than traditional methods allowed.
The answer is super technical: lab workers “bonded heteroatoms to the molecule of graphite in anode, which could be a catalyst for the capture and transmission of lithium through carbon bonds”, the company said. That standard enables a large phone battery to get a 60% charge in 30 minutes, compared to a 12% charge in the same period of time using conventional charging technology.
The video however shows that the Huawei battery has to be separately charged unlike charging it when inside a phone.
Huawei’s Lithium-ion device is similar in size and capacity to the batteries that come with most smartphones. It’s unclear how sophisticated the charging software in use by Huawei is.
Huawei’s claims this fast-charging technology could apply beyond the mobile phone’s field, including electric vehicles, wearable devices and mobile power supplies.
Advertisement
Will this ultimately work out to Huawei’s marketing advantage? However, once they are made available, life will be a tad bit easier as users will no longer have to worry about their battery life. With the launch of iOS 9, for instance, Apple introduced a low power mode that can extend your iPhone’s battery life by shutting off nonessential functions.
