The Problem with these Smartphone Batteries

So, this is an iPhone 17 Pro Max. It has

about a 5,000 mAh battery, but this is

the Honor Power 2. Yes, it's absolutely

a clone of the iPhone, but it's also

thinner than the iPhone and has a 10,000

mAh battery. And this is the world we're

living in now. There are many phones out

now with absolutely massive batteries

the size that we only used to see in

power banks, but without actually making

the phones any thicker, all thanks to a

new battery technology called silicon

carbon. So, if you're a subscriber, then

you've already heard me talk a lot,

especially in the past year, about

silicon carbon batteries and how great

they are and how they're even perfect

for certain form factors of phones, like

enabling the ultra thin ones like Galaxy

S25 Edge and iPhone Air because they

could be super super thin, but still

with silicon carbon have normal battery

capacities. But yet, those phones didn't

have silicon carbon. In fact, a lot of

phones, competitive flagship phones,

have come out lately that have skipped

the silicon carbon battery. It seems

like whole companies like Samsung and

Apple and Google are just waiting on the

sidelines and not touching this new

battery tech in any of their phones. And

I finally think I know why. So, let's

talk about these new smartphone

batteries. So, like I said, on the

surface, on the surface, it would seem

like silicon carbon is a no-brainer.

Obviously, you should have it in your

phone, especially if you're just looking

at the benefits. They're called silicon

carbon because they essentially swap out

graphite and use silicon, which can hold

way more energy than graphite. So, the

main advantage is higher energy density.

We have phones now with way bigger

battery capacities in the same footprint

as always. I remember when the the new

OnePlus flagship came out last January,

and it made this huge jump from 5,400

mAh straight to 6,000 mAh by going with

silicon carbon. And then later the same

year they went to 7,300 milliamp hours.

So it just felt like we are resetting

what to expect from a smartphone

battery. But of course, like I

mentioned, new Samsung phones keep

coming out, no silicon carbon batteries.

New iPhones have been coming out, no

silicon carbon. Even new Pixel phones,

same thing. And so people of course are

talking about it. Now, I'd had some

suspicions about why, and a couple other

YouTubers have also shared, but I think

the main theory was that these are huge

companies that are going to ask for

massive quantities of stuff from

suppliers. So, with a brand new tech

like Silicon Carbon, you know, if you're

Apple, you're going and asking for 10

million of these things for your new

iPhone. And maybe that wasn't possible

yet. So, understandable if that's true.

But then again, Xiaomi is huge and

they're using silicon carbon and all

their flagships and Realme and Honor and

Oppo and Huawei and all these companies

using tons of silicon carbon in a lot of

volume of phones. Meanwhile, Google's

over here with the Pixel not shipping

that many phones and not using silicon

carbon. So maybe that's not the whole

story. So then I recalled I've I've

gotten a few emails in the past year

from people in the industry and I won't

say which companies they work for but

all smartphone companies and

individually they'd each reached out to

me to mention that there are some

concerns with silicon carbon batteries

and all their stories matched up about a

totally different concern about swelling

and longevity. Now I had only seen that

in these emails. So, I went digging and

I reached out to a couple other sources

and people that I know at these

companies. And now that I've heard back

from them, I'm actually much more

confident that this is the main reason

that we're not seeing this tech

everywhere in a ton of phones. See, one

thing about batteries is that as they

charge and discharge, they expand and

contract a little bit with the heat,

just like almost any other material.

It's why sidewalks have cracks. It's why

bridges have expansion joints.

Basically, every material has to expand

and contract a little bit with heat,

right? Fun fact, water is one of the

only materials that actually expands

while cooling, but it expands about 10%

in volume while freezing. And if that

happens too fast, it cracks. So during

charging in a silicon carbon smartphone

battery, the silicon heats up and

absorbs lithium ions. And when that

happens, the silicon can expand to three

times its original volume. So that's

kind of insane. Like imagine a sponge

that triples in size when wet and then

shrinks back down and then over and over

again every time it charges and

discharges. Eventually things are

probably going to crack. You know that

meme going around where it's like, "Oh,

if you want to clean the ice off your

car windshield really fast, just pour

boiling water on it." But obviously you

shouldn't do that because that could

literally shatter your windshield

because of rapid temperature change

thermodynamics. So in the battery, the

silicon is actually really finely ground

instead of a solid block to avoid the

mechanical stresses and the carbon is

actually there just to absorb the

expansion. So that's why it's called

silicon carbon. So everyone's messing

around and trying to tune it. Some

companies are willing to include a

higher and higher percentage of silicon

because that lets you get a higher and

higher battery capacity in the same

space, but that's also pushing the

limits. And so they also have to do

their best to manage the inevitable

swelling to counteract that. It's just

physics or chemistry. I've I've actually

been told there are certain devices that

have a literal steel cage around the

battery to prevent it from swelling. And

then the cracking in this case is

potentially some type of internal damage

to the battery, which is obviously

really bad news. And worst case scenario

is some type of thermal runaway, which

obviously nobody wants that happening in

their pocket. And so you might be

thinking, oh, what about all the

testing? Like that's one of the most

common things we hear from these

companies is they're always able to

verify something like, you know, 80%

battery capacity after a thousand charge

cycles. So trying to give us some

confidence in the longevity of these

batteries because they've actually

tested that many cycles. Like that

should make it survive years of regular

use. But batteries obviously go through

a lot more in regular use than just

charge cycles. Like they deal with a lot

of outside heat and cold. They get

dropped sometimes. There's pressure

changes, there's humidity changes, etc.,

etc. It's a long list. So, testing is

really important, of course, but it's

really hard to account for all the

variables that a battery might

experience over a long period of time.

In one of my conversations, my source

mentions that with all the thorough

testing going on, getting issues down to

a rate of under one in 250,000

feels pretty good. Like if you have an

error rate of something that's under one

in 250,000, that's a very rare issue and

you should be good to go. But at Samsung

or Apple's scale, if it's tens of

millions of phones, that could still not

be good enough. That could still be a

dozen exploding Note 7s like it was in

2016. So since there isn't quite enough

real world data yet, especially over

longer periods of time, some companies

are choosing to just sit it out for now

and continue developing regular

lithium-ion batteries. And you know,

remember those companies I mentioned at

the beginning that are all not using

silicon carbon, the Samsung's, the

Apples, the Google's, they're all huge

companies, but there's also something

else they all have in common, which is

they all operate or at least have a big

presence in America. And I bring this up

because we've talked about this before.

The US especially is a very software

focused market. There's all this

ecosystem lock in and inherently less

hardware competition. People just want

the blue bubbles at this point. So, if

people aren't going to buy the new

iPhone because of a silicon carbon

battery or they're not switching off of

the iPhone because of some other phone

silicon carbon battery, then there is no

reason for Apple to take that risk yet.

But in other markets where people can

just use WhatsApp and be happy about it,

then there's way more hardware

competition and people are willing to

switch. So if one phone has a 40% bigger

battery because of some new emerging

technology and the other one feels like

they're being left behind, people will

move to that. So yeah, this will be

fascinating to watch it play out. You

know, today still in 2026, silicon

carbon batteries are still a bleeding

edge technology. They're still a little

bit riskier and lithium-ion batteries

are still the safe bet. But there's this

divide now. So, we'll have to keep an

eye on how these silicon carbon phones

actually age. You know, the first ones

came out about 3 years ago, but there's

been a lot more out in the real world in

the past year. And so, we'll check in.

Get subscribed, and maybe in a year or

two, we'll have a lot more real world

data. We'll check in. We'll see how

things are going. Thanks for watching.

Catch you in the next one. Peace.