One of Xiaomi’s sub-brands, Redmi introduced on Tuesday (28) its newest fast charging system, capable of reaching a staggering 300 W of power. The novelty breaks records by being the fastest charging technology announced for smartphones, surpassing the previous version of 210 W, and moving ahead of the fastest solution so far, from Realme, whose power reaches 240 W.
Launched in October 2022, the Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition surprised by breaking the fast charging record at the time by providing charging of up to 210 W, promising to recover 100% of the battery in about 9 minutes. In January of this year, rival Realme then took the lead by introducing a 240 W charging system, implemented in the Realme GT Neo 5, which promises to recover the charge in 10 minutes – possibly as a way to maintain battery integrity longer.
Less than two months later, Redmi doubles down on the bet by presenting its 300 W solution, even more, absurd power for a smartphone, which even touches some of the most robust gamer notebooks available today. The announcement was made on the Chinese social network Weibo, and demonstrated in a modified version of the Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition, with a smaller battery capacity (4,100 mAh, against 4,300 mAh of the Explorer available for sale).
In the video, you can see how the phone reaches 100% in just under 5 minutes, also showing an impressive time of just over 2 minutes to reach 50%. Redmi did not reveal details about cell durability, considering that the high power causes high stress on the device, but did indicate that there are a number of protection mechanisms in place to prevent explosions, overheating, and other serious failures.
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There would be more than 50 safety mechanisms in total, with the adapter also featuring “dual GaN” technology, thus being similar in size to lower power chargers. Interestingly, this series of safeguards seems to end up limiting the ability to reach 300W – it is noticeable from the video itself that the 300W is not maintained during the recharging period. The power is gradually increased until it settles at 280 W, and eventually reaches 290 W for a few seconds, when it begins to drop.
This is not the first time that a situation like this has happened: in real tests, the company’s 210 W recharge actually showed peaks of “only” 185 W. In both cases, the promised time was kept, and the figures presented are still much higher than for other charging technologies on the market. Even so, the situation raises questions about the limits of investment in such absurd powers and even more about the durability of the phones.
Neither Redmi, or even Xiaomi, have disclosed when we might see a device with 300W charging reach consumers, but should it keep pace with the release of the latest charging solutions, we are likely to see any of the brands’ releases debut the feature later this year.
