Huawei develops fast-charging batteries

Chinese manufacturer Huawei is growing in popularity in the smartphone space, as the Nexus 6P becomes one of Google’s most prestigious Nexus devices in the smartphone lineup’s history. Huawei’s hardware designs have been noted in China and worldwide, with the manufacturer topping Microsoft as the third most popular manufacturer on the global scene.

Even with the recent popularity spark, however, Huawei is not sitting still. The company’s smartphones and even the new Huawei Android Wear smartwatch follow in the vein of other manufacturers who want to make a name for themselves in the mobile market, but the key to all of the smartwatches, smartphones, and tablets concerns battery life. Lots of new mobile devices are being made each year, but few are improving battery life.

Take a look at this year’s smartphones, and you’ll see that, even in 2015, we still can’t get most smartphones to provide a day and a half (36 hours) of battery life on a single charge. You’ll only get that experience with a Motorola Droid Turbo 2, or some other phone with a 3,500mAh battery or higher (like Samsung’s Galaxy S6 Active). Huawei has said in days past that it wants to gain the popularity of Korean giant Samsung, and the Chinese manufacturer’s commitment to improving battery life is yet another step in the company’s goal.

According to the latest report, Huawei’s Watt Lab has developed batteries that can charge to 48% in just five minutes – or, as Huawei says, “in the time it takes to drink a coffee.” The company was able to achieve this feat by heteroatoms, which can increase the charging speed of batteries without compromising battery life.

There are some things to keep in mind about the Huawei Watt Lab experiment, however. First, the battery was a 600mAh battery, not a large-sized battery, so Huawei’s fast-charging batteries may work for wearables like smartwatches and smart fitness bands (but not necessarily smartphones and tablets at this time). Next, is the fact that the fast-charging batteries for smartphones and tablets is something that a number of manufacturers have been working on. Huawei joins companies like Samsung in this, with Samsung having already implemented fast-charging technology into its own micro-USB adapters. USB Type-C charging is being inaugurated with Huawei’s Nexus 6P, and USB-C is known for its fast charging capabilities. The issue with USB-C charging, as is the case for USB charging as a whole, is that it mandates “wired” charging (as opposed to the more remote wireless charging).

Huawei’s fast-charging batteries give hope for the future of mobile tech, with the idea that some day, we won’t need to continue charging our devices with wires at all. Wireless charging will be more “wireless” than it is now (even the charging pad or mat won’t need wires in the future), and Huawei’s work in fast-charging batteries may give the company something of a “turbo charging” advantage to rival companies like Motorola (with its Turbo charger) Samsung, and even Qualcomm (with its Quick Charge 3.0 tech in the newly announced Snapdragon 820 processor).

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