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Mobile Editor, Tech Advisor
News Analysis
Nov 4, 2026
Honor is reportedly working on a 14,000mAh phone that would blow even the current best battery life phones out of the water
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Battery life. It’s the one feature on modern smartphones that’s always felt like it’s lagging behind, with 24 hours on a full charge still being considered “good”.
The introduction of silicon-carbon (Si-C) technology has improved matters, but it still feels like a fundamental choice between design and elite battery life. You can get truly incredible longevity on rugged phones, but few will put up with an incredibly heavy, industrial build to get it. But what if you didn’t have to choose? Honor might finally crack the code to week-long battery life in a phone that’s not a literal brick in 2027, and I couldn’t be more excited.
Stratospheric battery life – with a design to match
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When I first saw the story about Honor working on a phone with a giant 14,000mAh battery, I wasn’t particularly interested. After all, phones with huge cells are nothing new, but there’s a big reason they don’t have mainstream appeal: they’re absolutely huge. No-one wants to be lugging around a handset that weighs 500g, not to mention that many are more than a full inch thick. It’s like having a full 500ml water bottle in your pocket! But Digital Chat Station, a Weibo leaker with a great track record for phone news, has seemingly confirmed that it’ll be under 250g.
That’s right, it’ll be no heavier than the 249g iPhone 18 Pro Max, which would be incredibly impressive. The Honor phone may loosely resemble the iPhone 18 Pro Max Foundry
The leaker also says (directly translated from Chinese) that “the thickness won’t be excessive either”, highlighting its “high-density battery”. If this materialises, it could be a massive breakthrough. With week-long battery life supposedly “guaranteed”, it could fundamentally change the way we use our phones – for good and bad. The charging speed trade-off
Not having to charge your sub-250g phone for an entire week still feels like an unattainable luxury. If Honor manages to deliver that in 2027, even if limited to China, it’ll be a momentous moment. However, it’ll also require a fundamental shift in our phone habits.
Specifically, the relatively quick daily top-up would be replaced but a once-weekly – but much longer – charge for
Digital Chat Station hasn’t yet mentioned how fast the Honor phone might charge. But even if it matches the Magic 8 Pro’s 120W speeds in China (100W globally), going from 0-100% is likely to be 90 minutes or longer.
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The Magic 8 Pro is already one of the fastest charging phones you can buy Chris Hall / Foundry
It reminds me of the early days of smartphones, where you had to leave your phone plugged in for hours (or overnight) to get back to 100%. It’ll require a level of consistency and discipline that many people (myself included) aren’t used to these days. Is it a worthwhile trade-off? For me, absolutely, but that won’t be the case for everyone. Even if the Honor 14000mAh phone launches globally, I don’t think the power bank market has anything to worry about for a while. In the meantime, the best battery phones you can buy right now still go far beyond a standard day of usage.
