Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi has demonstrated a new Hypercharge system that can charge phones at a monstrous 200 W through a wire, and 120 W wirelessly. Just three minutes on the charge cable is enough to get a large phone battery to 50 percent.
In a short time lapse video, Xiaomi demonstrated the wired and wireless charge systems, with a clock on one side of the phone and a power meter on the other, showing exactly how many watts are going into the phone in real time. That meter is interesting to watch; you can see the charge power slowly ramp up as the battery is gently charged through the first stages of the battery, only reaching the full 200 W once the battery is already at 22 percent – one minute and 25 seconds after the charge starts.
Likewise, it starts to ease off once the battery’s at 50 percent, slowing down its rate as the battery fills up – so there’s certainly some consideration being given here to cell longevity – even if it’s still absolutely blast-charging by most phones’ standards, smashing out ~80 W when the phone’s at 99 percent.
All is not necessarily as it seems, though; the phone is a Mi 11 Pro with a 4,000-mAh battery – a custom build, since the production phone runs a 5,000-mAh battery instead and its charger tops out at a still-impressive 67 W.
This is a lab test, not a production promise. Lithium batteries really don’t like this kind of treatment, so while Xiaomi can claim world records for both wired and wireless charging, we’d be very surprised to see anything of this nature on an upcoming production phone. Charging that fast would heat and stress the battery, and likely tank its useful life cycle. Personally, I keep an ancient 1-W charger around to charge my phone up as slowly as possible overnight, and I save the fast charger for emergencies.
Xiaomi can now “hypercharge” a phone from 0-100% in 8 minutes [New Atlas]