Future Phones Could Get Fully Charged in Just 1 Second: Says Oppo Experts

If you could just rewind back five years and tell someone “Soon, smartphones will charge in 15 minutes,” they probably wouldn’t believe you, as they were addicted with their daily overnight charges. But over the past few years, and particularly in 2022, the number of phones with lightning-fast charging capabilities has increased significantly. However, according to Oppo researchers, future smartphones may charge completely in under one second.

Future Phones Can Get Charge in 1 Second

Unfortunately, quick charging has its negatives as well. Fast charging has a number of disadvantages, such as the harm it does to battery life or the dangers of overheating and harming a phone, which is why some phone lovers are wary.

Prior to the release of the Oppo Reno 8, Edward Tian, the director of Oppo’s Charging Technology Lab in China, provided information on charging technology. Many of the fast-charging devices we’ve tested at Mentitude also have short battery lives and lose their ability to hold a charge more quickly than other devices. Tian concurs that rapid charging can result in bigger battery sizes because, to charge faster, you need to use battery cells with a higher C-rate, which leads to worse energy density. Tian does not, however, dispute with the conclusion, or at least the poor battery life component of it.

The Reno 8 phones’ “efficient MediaTek chipset and unique software optimizations,” according to Tian, are two important factors in how long their batteries last while requiring 80W charging. Although we haven’t tested the Reno 8 yet, we have found that devices powered by MediaTek frequently offer long battery lives in our tests of various Android smartphones.

But at least Oppo’s efforts to change people’s perceptions about fast charging smartphones are evident. For smartphones, battery size is significant, but battery health— a device’s capacity to maintain a high maximum over time—is crucial. If your equipment rapidly loses health, even if it has the largest battery in the world, you will soon only be able to power it to a small portion of its initial capacity.

The phrase “rapid charging” has changed over the past few years, moving from being used to describe 18W chargers to ones that are far faster. The Oppo 150W rapid charging technology, which was later employed in its sister company’s OnePlus 10T, was first introduced in 2022. A phone may now be charged in just 15 minutes. Where does it stop though? We questioned Tian about the future of fast charging technology and if Oppo would ever deem it “completed” or fast enough. Short answer? No.

For me, my job as a technical engineer in the fast-changing industry is to push boundaries. We’ll keep researching until eventually phones can be fully charged in a single second.

a moment! Imagine putting in your phone for a day and then instantly taking it out of the charger. It sounds like a far-off possibility, and it won’t likely become a reality for a very long time. But it’s a commendable objective for an engineer.

The hardest aspect is not increasing the charging pace. More factors need to be taken into account in order to provide consumers with a decent rapid charging experience, including safety, charging temperature, the energy density of the battery cell, the size of the charger, battery longevity, etc.