The race for the fastest charging mobile phone is on
Realme just launched an Android phone in China that takes the crown of the fastest charging smartphone on the market. The Realme GT Neo5 promises to charge the smartphone's 4600 mAh battery fully in under 10 minutes.
Realme achieves this through the integration of up to 240W fast charging in the device. It is interesting to note that Realme's new GT Neo model comes with two configurations. Only the more expensive one includes 240W fast charging. The other configuration supports 150W fast charging, which is still quite fast based on today's standards.
Both Realme GT Neo5 versions are powered by a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset. The main differences between the two devices, apart from the fast charging difference, is that the pricier version comes with 16 gigabytes of RAM and either 256 gigabytes or 1 terabyte of storage.
The less pricy variant of the Realme GT 5 Neo has 8 , 12 or 16 gigabytes of RAM and a fixed storage capacity of 256 gigabytes.
There is one additional difference between the devices. While the pricier version of the Realme GT Neo5 comes with faster charging capabilities, it is supported by a 4600 mAh battery. The less pricey version has a 5000 mAh battery instead.
According to Realme, the 240W adapter is capable of charging the GT Neo5 to 20% in just 80 seconds. In about 4 minutes, 50% is reached and the 100% is reached in under 10 minutes.
Prices for the GT Neo5 150W start at 2599 Yuan, which is about $380 United States Dollar. The most expensive GT Neo5 240W variant is available for 3499 Yuan, which is about $513 United States Dollar.
Realme demonstrated the live charging capabilities of its flagship smartphone two days ago during a presentation.
Comparison to other smartphones
Faster charging has become more and more of a requirement in the smartphone market. It is one of the areas that device manufacturers can distinguish their devices from others, at least in the Android world and for now.
GSM Arena lists 76 devices in its database that support 100W and faster charging. The vast majority of these devices are manufactured by Chinese companies such as Xiaomi, Huawei, Realme, vivo, OnePlus and ZTE. Increase support to 150W fast charging, and only 12 devices are returned.
Apple boasts on its Fast Charge your iPhone support page that Apple customers may recharge the iPhone "up to 50 percent battery in around 30 minutes". That's three times as long as the Realme GT Neo5 requires to charge the phone to 100%. That is even more impressive considering that the GT Neo5 has a larger battery capacity than any Apple iPhone that is currently on the market.
Closing Words
The main caveat regarding Realme's GT Neo5 is that it is only available in China currently. It is unclear whether the device will be launched by the company in other regions and markets. The latest Realme phone that is available in other regions is the Realme GT Neo 3, which the company launched in March 2022.
Now you: is fast charging a criteria for you when buying a smartphone?
The fastest full charge I ever saw was my granddad swap batteries on his JCB phone – I have spare batteries for my samsung phone as well because it’s just faster, even have a dedicated battery charger because samsung used to make them at one point :)
LG already won this race by selling swappable batteries with battery chargers. Instead of charging your phone battery, you charge the spare battery. It only takes 30 seconds to swap battery. 100% charge in 30 seconds beats every fast charging gimmick.
Not hard to predict we will see endless reports of exploding batteries while supercharging. Like lighting the fuse on a dynamite stick when you plug in your charger.. people will lose limbs, eyesight and houses will burn down. But hey, you saved a few minutes!
If I have a choice between 240W fast charging(which is really stupid) or a headphone jack, memory card slot and a larger battery 5000MAh with relatively fast charging under 50W or 33W – well I know what I’m picking. Plus this crazy fast charging takes a toll on long term battery life.
No external SD card or headphone jack support? No, thanks.
My 5T from 5 years ago quick charge is more enough. I can get from 50 to 100 under 30 minutes.
Charging faster just reduces the efficiency of charging and degrades the battery. No thanks, I prefer a long-lasting battery, I can just charge overnight.
I can take my galaxy s10+ from 60% to full WIRELESS charging in about 2hrs, using cord takes approx 1 hour. fast enough for me.
Fast charging is frying smartphones internals.
I don’t know about that, maybe it’s true. I’ve heard that fast charging kills battery cycles, effectively shortening its lifespan.
I guess this is just more planned obsolence.
Yeah and what that does to the health and longevity of the battery doesn’t matter at all, since we all buy new expensive flagship phones twice a year right? This trend is just a stupid gimmick. Focus on making batteries that last a week or two between charges instead goddamit. It wouldn’t even be expensive: remove your bloatware, slim down android. There are thousands of useless features that just suck computing power and battery. Yes, that would mean less revenue since you can’t fill your garbage phones to the brim with adware but hear me out: Charge MUCH MUCH MUUUUUCH MORE for the GOOD, ultra trimmed down, megasuperfast phones with ridiculously good battery life. I promise, people would buy them. Let the poor people suffer with your regular shitty phones you churn out by the billions every minute, it’s not like you care about the users or the environment anyway. Oh and while you’re at it: since you are clearly not interested in making durable, I mean DURABLE, screens: ship your phones with one pre-fitted glass screen protector so one accident is on the house. You know: be a good guy. I dare you.
Q: Is fast charging a criteria for you when buying a smartphone?
A: No, I sleep long enough for them to charge overnight.
Someone should tell google about fast charging. “Your phone will automatically backup after charging for 2 hours”. If you don’t leave it charging for more then 2 hours, it doesn’t get backed up.
@Mystique: If people would stop buying phones they think make them look cool because they are insanely overpirced!
Go look at Motorola, their phones still have headphone jacks and SD card slots and cost half what those ones your complaining about do.
I feel like fast charging would be less of a need once they begin to roll out different battery tech which is also being developed now that will last many times longer than your current batteries on the market.
@Tachy
Yes, I totally agree. I refuse to buy overly expensive phones that are made for you to continue buying into their BS. Remove external memory support so if people want more memory they have to pay for larger internal storage and if that doesn’t cover it… oh oh we have a service for that too and you have to subscribe to unsafe cloud storage… RUBBISH!
I wish there was a Motorola system but none of them fit my use case. A lot of the companies that add or the bells and whistles purposely give you inferior tech to their flagship models that do not have such features. People want the best or close to and want all the features.
The closest phone I have seen for my use case is the ASUS Zenfone flip. I genuinely have a use for the flip camera too but yeah phones suck these days and some would argue they always sucked. (privacy issues aside of course because that’s an immediate concern and negative)
That’s great and all but how about we stop removing stuff from phones such as external memory support, charging cables, power bricks and hey how about we focus on coming up with a solution for waterproof phones whilst having a removable battery. Watches have been doing it for decades now. Quit the BS phone makers.
I feel like consumers have had enough of the BS and it is being reflected in spending as phones are not selling as well as they used to.
Samsung S5 had that :) nothing new under the sun
There’s already a solution for waterproof phones with a removable battery. They have existed for years, but they don’t get marketed because manufacturers would rather people buy disposable phones. Why sell someone a $20 battery when their battery dies when you can make them buy a $1500 phone?