Xiaomi might be working on a charger that's nearly 7x faster than the iPhone 11's

Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro
Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro (Image credit: Future)

In 2019, Xiaomi unveiled a 100W phone charger which was much snappier than anything else at the time, and it seems the company may be about to one-up itself with the development of a 120W charger.

A video put out by the Sparrow News YouTube channel (which you can see further down) shows a physical Xiaomi power plug, the type that comes bundled with smartphones, which powers up at 120W. That's much faster than the iPhone 11's 18W charger and the Samsung Galaxy S20's 25W plug block.

Xiaomi's 100W fast charger powered a 4,000mAh battery from 0% to 100% in 17 minutes, and at 120W that time could be sub-15 minutes. Soon, plugging your phone in and forgetting about it for an hour may be a thing of the past.

As suggested by its previously-shown 100W charger, Xiaomi is working on super-fast phone chargers to cut down the time it takes to power your phone, so it's very possible this leaked information will be backed up by an official announcement soon.

It's worth pointing out that Xiaomi isn't the first company to reach 120W charging speeds, as in early 2019 Vivo showed off a demo of a 120W charger filling a 4,000mAh battery in 13 minutes, but that tech is yet to make its way to a smartphone you can buy.

But will we see it?

Like Vivo's 120W charger, Xiaomi's 100W tech isn't currently available - instead it's just a demo to show the technology is there. 

There are likely hurdles Xiaomi would need to overcome before putting the tech in a purchasable smartphone, as speeds this quick could damage the phone's battery or cause it to heat up rapidly, so the company will need to find solutions to these issues before putting the tech in smartphones.

Given that phone companies are always improving the specs on their devices, we'd expect 120W chargers on phones to exist at some point, though it might not be in the immediate future.

There's also the possibility that the video is fake, with a forged sticker placed on top a pre-existing Xiaomi charger, so take it with a pinch of salt.

If this 120W charging tech is real, we wouldn't expect to see it in smartphones right away, but it's possible in the next few years we could see a Xiaomi phone with 120W charging.

Tom Bedford
Contributor

Tom Bedford joined TechRadar in early 2019 as a staff writer, and left the team as deputy phones editor in late 2022 to work for entertainment site (and TR sister-site) What To Watch. He continues to contribute on a freelance basis for several sections including phones, audio and fitness.

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