The simplest cure for smartphone battery anxiety isn’t pairing your slim device with a clunky portable charger, but rather taking full advantage of those times when you have access to an outlet. As recently demonstrated on Weibo, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 Pro+ does just that and only takes five minutes to fully charge. You could spend all night browsing TikTok, plugging in your phone in the morning and it would be fully charged long before you’re done showering.
Although the Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 Pro+ Android smartphone is aimed at overseas markets and was officially launched last November, Xiaomi is taking advantage of the Mobile World Congress trade show currently being held in Barcelona, Spain, to showcase the potential of the company’s fast charging technology to demonstrate .
This is also not a demonstration with a heavily modified version of the Redmi Note 12 Pro+. It’s the same hardware currently shipping, although it seems Xiaomi has swapped out the handset’s standard 5,000mAh battery for a smaller 4,100mAh option, which certainly contributes to the faster charging speeds. However, 4100mAh is only slightly smaller than the 4323mAh battery that Apple ships with the iPhone 14 Pro Max and much larger than the 3200mAh battery in the iPhone 14 Pro, so it’s still a very usable capacity for a smartphone .
Xiaomi Redmi 300 Watt Extreme Charging Demo
But while the charging speed of the iPhone 14 Pro Max is around 26-29W depending on the charger used and takes around 110 minutes to fully charge the handset battery, the Redmi Note 12 Pro+ charges when paired with a 300W charger to 50% capacity in just two minutes and fully charged in just under five minutes.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a smartphone charging at incredible speeds. Earlier this month, Realme showed off its Android smartphone GT Neo 5, which charges its 4,600mAh battery in just 10 minutes with a 240W charger. While battery technology may not make a quantum leap in terms of capacity, fast charging promises to be a viable solution for feature-rich devices that demand increasing amounts of power.
However, what is rarely addressed in these impressive charging demonstrations is the hefty charger you need to carry to reach those speeds and how charging a phone in just five minutes affects the life of its battery. If your smartphone isn’t holding a charge after a year of five-minute power-ups, the benefits don’t really seem worth it. That’s especially true for models like the Redmi Note 12 Pro+, which don’t offer batteries that can be easily swapped out or replaced without sending them in for repair.
