OPINION: Look back just a year or two ago and you’d spot a variety of phones offering rapid wired charging capabilities; the OnePlus 10T offered 150W, the Xiaomi 13 Pro offered 120W and the Oppo Find X6 Pro boasted 100W. Then there were outliers like the Realme GT5, which offered a whopping 240W despite not actually making it to the European market as initially planned.
These wired charge speeds have steadily been increasing over the years, allowing for a full charge in less than 20 minutes in some cases. However, it seems the tech peaked in 2023 and has slipped back down that hill in 2024 with most flagship smartphones capping out somewhere in the 80W region when it comes to wired charging.
That’s true not only of the Oppo Find X8 Pro but also of the likes of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra and Honor Magic 6 Pro, all of which had predecessors with faster, more powerful charging capabilities – so what has happened over the past 12 months to bring about such a dramatic shift?
While there are likely a number of factors at play, including the all-important balance between fast charging and battery degradation – faster charging produces more heat which in turn damages the battery within the phone, reducing its capacity over time – it also seems like new battery technology could have something to do with it.
Silicon carbon battery tech is getting way more popular
That new battery technology is silicon carbon, which has skyrocketed in popularity among smartphone manufacturers over the past year – and it’s not hard to see why OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) are going wild for it.
Compared to the lithium-ion battery tech found within most smartphones over the past decade, silicon carbon batteries offer a wealth of benefits, with the biggest being a massive boost to energy density.
This essentially boils down to the fact that silicon can store more lithium ions than the graphite alternative found in lithium-ion batteries, meaning manufacturers can pack more power into the same space or potentially slim down devices without a knock-on effect on battery life.
Silicon-carbon batteries also tend to perform better in colder temperatures, making them ideal for use in colder regions around the world. The tech could also deliver a much-needed revolution in the EV market, but that’s another story altogether.
It may not be the perfect lithium-ion replacement
However, for all the benefits of the tech, it has one big problem in its current iteration; the expansion and contraction of the battery as the temperature of the cell changes during use.
Plus, with super fast charging tech generating a lot of heat within a smartphone – anyone who has fast-charged a phone will be familiar with how warm the handsets can get – it simply means that silicon carbon batteries can’t charge quite as quickly as the lithium-ion competition.
With that in mind, it shouldn’t come as much surprise to find out that the Oppo Find X8 Pro, Honor Magic 6 Pro and Xiaomi 14 Ultra have all made the jump to silicon carbon technology. Do you see why that 80W charge limit makes more sense now?
Don’t get me wrong, 80W charging is very fast indeed. The problem is that, combined with a massive increase in battery capacity in silicon carbon-powered smartphones, it’s beginning to take a while to charge these phones – closer to the one-hour mark than the 20-30 minutes we’ve seen with previous fast-charging flagships.
The good news is that there’s no inherent limit on the charge speeds with silicon carbon batteries, it’s more down to manufacturers being cautious and focusing on other areas of battery optimisation while the technology is still new, so we could see a return to true fast charging down the line, but exactly when that’ll happen is unclear right now.
