This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on phones and other tech outside the US, follow Dominic Preston. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.
How it started
Smartphone batteries are bigger than ever, while the phones themselves are shrinking. But whether you’re seeing the benefit – thin phones with big batteries – depends on where you live.
The key is the introduction of silicon-carbon batteries, which make it possible to fit more battery capacity into the same size cell, as in phones like the Honor Power, whose 8,000mAh battery delivers more power than some iPads. The flip side of that is putting the same capacity into much smaller cells, seen in the likes of the Oppo Find N5, a foldable phone that’s as extraordinarily thin as Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 7 but has a 5,600mAh battery that wouldn’t be out of place in an Ultra-sized flagship.
Honor and Oppo aren’t the only companies on board. Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo, OnePlus, Nothing, and more have all released phones using silicon-carbon batteries. It’s not just phones, either; Whoop wearables have used silicon-carbon batteries since 2021 thanks to a partnership with Sila Nanotechnologies, and EV manufacturers from General Motors to Porsche have invested heavily in the technology.
But you’ve probably noticed some pretty big names missing from that list — none of Apple, Samsung, and Google, the three major players in the US phone market, have embraced the new batteries yet.
