Samsung and Apple brought ultra-thin mobile phones to the market with little battery life. China’s response: hold my tank

Samsung was the first, and Apple followed a few months later. The introduction of increasingly thinner mobile phones on the market did not meet any specific need, beyond reducing weight and thickness. Betting on this format, at least with the proposals of Western manufacturers, brought with it sacrifices both in camera and autonomy. In China they are clear that There is no need to sacrifice one thing or the other..

The Honor Magic8 Pro Air. Recently, Honor presented the Magic 8 Pro Air in China. The surname already tells us where the shots are going.

• It is a mobile phone of only 6.1mm
• It has the best MediaTek processor
• It has a 5,500mAh battery
• It has a triple camera system (wide angle, wide angle and telephoto).

It turns out that it was possible. There are a few millimeters of difference between the Honor Magic8 Pro Air and its direct rivals, the iPhone Air and Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge. But the numbers speak for themselves.

The Honor device is 0.3mm thicker than an S25 edge and 0.5mm thicker than the iPhone Air. To give you context, there is a guitar pick difference and a 75% higher energy density in the case of the Chinese mobile. An outrage.

Furthermore, China has shown that it is not necessary to give up a single camera to opt for this format. And when we talk about flagships, this point is key.

The 10K club. Beyond demonstrating that in ultra-thin mobile phones, silicon-carbon technologies allow energy densities that were impossible until a few years ago, the “10K club” is adding more and more participants.

Chinese phones with normal thickness or even less than usual with 10,000mAh batteries. The last one to join the club was Realme P4 Powerthe first mobile phone in the world with a 10,001mAh battery. These are figures that double the usual standard in the rest of the ranges.

The answer? There is neither nor is it expected in the short term. China has been ahead in the race to deploy silicon-carbon batteries, one that is not so easy to get into. Such high density batteries require:

• Greater regulations at the transport level, especially in the European Union.
• Much higher prices, as Xiaomi advanced.
• A durability risk not yet proven.

Moving towards silicon entails important changes that traditional manufacturers, accustomed to a conservative and slow strategy, are not yet willing to take on.

Image | Honor

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