Xiaomi's breakthrough allows more power to fit inside a smaller-sized battery
Xiaomi announced Friday on Weibo that it has created a new breakthrough in its smartphone battery technology. This isn't something that Xiaomi fans will have to wait years for as a translation of Xiaomi's post says that production of this new tech will start as soon as the second half of next year. What this technology will do is increase the capacity of a battery by 10% while keeping the volume of the component the same.
What this means is that Xiaomi will be able to fit more battery power into a smaller package. Xiaomi will do this by increasing electrode silicon content and making a change to the packaging by shrinking and twisting the control circuits so they lie flush with the top of the battery instead of sticking out. As a result, Xiaomi will be able to place a 4400mAh battery into the space normally used for a 4000mAh battery.
Xiaomi's new battery technology is on the right allowing more battery power to fit into a smaller space
In addition, the machine translation of the Weibo post mentions something called a "fuel gauge chip" that not only allows the battery to live a longer life, it also makes it safer. It allows the phone to use Xiaomi's technology to intelligently charge the battery overnight. Many handsets will already do this and call the feature adaptive charging. Using machine learning, your phone learns what time you usually take your handset off the charger in the morning.
The phone then charges the battery to 80% and computes when it needs to start charging again to hit 100% by the time you usually unplug the device. This prevents the constant trickling of power to the battery designed to keep the charge at 100% from destroying the battery's health. And as we said, many handsets already offer a feature like this although Xiaomi has it built-in to the battery controller along with a temperature management system.
Xiaomi's battery breakthrough will help to make batteries safer and live longer
Xiaomi's announcement won't help deliver a huge improvement to your battery life, but faster charging is coming. USB-C 2.1 can deliver maximum output to 240 watts using a USB-C cable. This is part of the new "Extended Power Range" system that is overkill when charging a single smartphone. At this point, 100W charging is fast enough for a smartphone.
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