240 watts? 300 watts! Realme and Xiaomi are looking for the fastest power supply unit

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Realme presented the GT3 for the global market. The smartphone comes with a 240-watt power supply unit that charges the smartphone in less than ten minutes. Xiaomi countered with a demonstration of a 300-watt power supply unit that charges a smartphone battery in half the time.

240 watts, 10 minutes

Realme can claim to have launched the first smartphone with a 240-watt power supply on the market. It took just under a year after the first public presentation for the GT3 (GT Neo 5 it is called in China) was unveiled.

It should take a little less than ten minutes to fully charge the Realme GT3's 4600 mAh battery. A 30-second charge should be enough for two hours of phone calls or 40 minutes of video streaming. The battery should still have 80 per cent of its capacity after 1600 charges. This is significantly more than the usual 500 to 800 charging cycles and also more than the 1000 specified in the EU Ecodesign Directive.

Realme calls its fast charging technology "Supervooc 240". Three chips control the current flow, which comes from the power supply unit at twelve amps. For comparison: The 120-watt power supply from the Xiaomi 13 Pro uses six amps. If you recognise Supervooc from other brands: Realme, like OnePlus and Oppo, is part of the BBK Group, and all three brands use the technology - so far in slower variants. The new OnePlus 11, for example, uses 100 watts.

The Realme GT3 will be available in selected European countries from May and June. However, an official price is only available in dollars so far. It starts at 649 dollars.

300 watts, 5 minutes

From China, Xiaomi torpedoes the presentation of Realme in Barcelona. The Redmi sub-brand posted a video online in which a modified Redmi Note 12 is fully charged with a 300-watt power supply in a little under five minutes. When comparing the charging times, however, it should be noted that the 4100 mAh battery has almost ten per cent less capacity.

For the demonstration, Xiaomi customised the smartphone and, according to its own information, installed over 50 components for charging safety. The company did not say whether and when the technology could be ready for series devices.

HyperCharge with 210 watts is likely to be much further along in development. Xiaomi presented this fast-charging technology at the Mobile World Congress. Despite 30 watts less, the battery - with an unknown capacity - is fully charged in less than ten minutes.