Meizu says Phone’s battery quick charge from zero to full in 20 minutes

Chinese smartphone maker claims breakthrough in charge times with new Super mCharge tech.

One of the downsides of Meizu's battery tech is that the cables cost three times as much as its current cables.

Image: Meizu

Chinese smartphone maker Meizu has shown off its new Super mCharge tech fully charging a 3,000mAh battery in 20 minutes.

Meizu unveiled the new battery tech on Tuesday at Mobile World Congress, offering a peek at the next generation of its mCharge quick-charging technology for lithium-ion batteries.

The company says Super mCharge is 5.5 times faster than its predecessor, delivering a 60 percent charge in 10 minutes and a full charge in 20 minutes.

That performance compares with Qualcomm's recently announced Quick Charge 4.0 tech in the new Snapdragon 835 processor, which in tests with a 2 750mAh battery delivered a 50 percent charge in 15 minutes, or an estimated five-hour charge in five minutes.

As reported by GSMArena, the Meizu's Super mCharge charger is a beast. Physically, it's almost as big as a smartphone and is also rated at 11V/5A, which is capable of transferring a massive 55W of power, or more than twice the output of Oppo's VOOC tech and Motorola's TurboCharger.

Meizu's first-generation mCharge was 18W, while the second generation delivered 24W.

Meizu says it created a 3,000mAh battery that can handle four times the current of existing lithium-ion batteries and claims it will sustain 80 percent capacity after 800 complete charge and discharge cycles, giving it a life span of over two years. It also created a new data cable that can transfer up to 160W of power.

According to Meizu, phones with its Super mCharge tech hit a maximum temperature of 38C-100.4F degrees compared with Qualcomm's Quick Charge 3.0's 44C-111.2F degrees. Key to keeping it cool is so-called "charge pump technology" that happens over two circuits, allowing it achieve a charging efficiency of 98 percent.

The downsides are that the cables cost three times as much as its current cables and that Super mCharge won't be in any devices for another one to two years.