0:04 So, this is an iPhone 17 Pro Max. It has
0:08 about a 5,000 mAh battery, but this is
0:10 the Honor Power 2. Yes, it's absolutely
0:12 a clone of the iPhone, but it's also
0:15 thinner than the iPhone and has a 10,000
0:17 mAh battery. And [music] this is the
0:19 world we're living in now. There are
0:20 many phones out now with absolutely
0:22 massive batteries the size that we only
0:24 used to see in power banks, but without
0:26 actually making the phones any thicker,
0:28 all thanks to a new battery technology
0:31 called silicon carbon. So, if you're a
0:32 subscriber, then you've already heard me
0:34 talk a lot, especially in the past year,
0:37 about silicon carbon batteries and how
0:38 great they are and how they're even
0:40 perfect for certain form factors of
0:41 phones, like enabling the ultra thin
0:44 ones like Galaxy S25 Edge and iPhone Air
0:46 because they could be super super thin,
0:48 but still with silicon carbon have
0:51 normal battery capacities. But yet,
0:54 those phones didn't have silicon carbon.
0:56 In fact, a lot of phones, competitive
0:58 flagship phones, have come out lately
1:00 that have skipped the silicon carbon
1:02 battery. It seems like whole companies
1:06 like Samsung and Apple and Google are
1:08 just waiting on the sidelines and not
1:09 touching this new battery tech in any of
1:12 their phones. And I finally think I know
1:14 why. So, let's talk about these new
1:17 smartphone batteries. So, like I said,
1:20 on the surface, on the surface, it would
1:21 seem like silicon carbon is a
1:22 no-brainer. Obviously, you should have
1:24 it in your phone, especially if you're
1:25 just looking at the benefits. They're
1:26 called silicon carbon because they
1:28 essentially swap out graphite and use
1:30 silicon, which can hold way more energy
1:32 than graphite. So, the main advantage is
1:34 higher energy density. We have phones
1:37 now with way bigger battery capacities
1:39 in the same footprint as always. I
1:41 remember when the the new OnePlus
1:43 flagship came out last January, and it
1:46 made this huge jump from 5,400 mAh
1:48 straight to 6,000 mAh by going with
1:50 silicon carbon. And then later the same
1:54 year they went to 7,300 milliamp hours.
1:56 So it just felt like we are resetting
1:57 what to expect from a smartphone
1:58 battery. But of course, like I
2:00 mentioned, new Samsung phones keep
2:02 coming out, no silicon carbon batteries.
2:04 New iPhones have been coming out, no
2:06 silicon carbon. Even new Pixel phones,
2:08 same thing. And so people of course are
2:10 talking about it. Now, I'd had some
2:13 suspicions about why, and a couple other
2:14 YouTubers have also shared, but I think
2:17 the main theory was that these are huge
2:18 companies that are going to ask for
2:20 massive quantities of stuff from
2:21 suppliers. So, with a brand new tech
2:23 like Silicon Carbon, you know, if you're
2:26 Apple, you're going and asking for 10
2:27 million of these things for your new
2:29 iPhone. And maybe that wasn't possible
2:32 yet. So, understandable if that's true.
2:36 But then again, Xiaomi is huge and
2:38 they're using silicon carbon and all
2:41 their flagships and Realme and Honor and
2:43 Oppo and Huawei and all these companies
2:45 using tons of silicon carbon in a lot of
2:47 volume of phones. Meanwhile, Google's
2:48 over here with the Pixel not shipping
2:50 that many phones and not using silicon
2:52 carbon. So maybe that's not the whole
2:54 story. So then I recalled I've I've
2:57 gotten a few emails in the past year
2:58 from people in the industry and I won't
3:00 say which companies they work for but
3:03 all smartphone companies and
3:04 individually they'd each reached out to
3:07 me to mention that there are some
3:09 concerns with silicon carbon batteries
3:11 and all their stories matched up about a
3:14 totally different concern about swelling
3:16 and longevity. Now I had only seen that
3:18 in these emails. So, I went digging and
3:19 I reached out to a couple other sources
3:21 and people that I know at these
3:22 companies. And now that I've heard back
3:25 from them, I'm actually much more
3:27 confident that this is the main reason
3:28 that we're not seeing this tech
3:30 everywhere in a ton of phones. See, one
3:32 thing about batteries is that as they
3:35 charge and discharge, they expand and
3:38 contract a little bit with the heat,
3:39 just like almost any other material.
3:41 It's why sidewalks have cracks. It's why
3:43 bridges have expansion joints.
3:45 Basically, every material has to expand
3:46 and contract a little bit with heat,
3:49 right? Fun fact, water is one of the
3:51 only materials that actually expands
3:54 while cooling, but it expands about 10%
3:56 in volume while freezing. And if that
3:58 happens too fast, it cracks. So during
4:00 charging in a silicon carbon smartphone
4:02 battery, the silicon heats up and
4:04 absorbs lithium ions. And when that
4:07 happens, the silicon can expand to three
4:09 times its original volume. So that's
4:11 kind of insane. Like imagine a sponge
4:13 that triples in size when wet and then
4:15 shrinks back down and then over and over
4:17 again every time it charges and
4:19 discharges. Eventually things are
4:20 probably going to crack. You know that
4:21 meme going around where it's like, "Oh,
4:23 if you want to clean the ice off your
4:25 car windshield really fast, just pour
4:26 boiling water on it." But obviously you
4:28 shouldn't do that because that could
4:30 literally shatter your windshield
4:32 because of rapid temperature change
4:35 thermodynamics. So in the battery, the
4:38 silicon is actually really finely ground
4:40 instead of a solid block to avoid the
4:43 mechanical stresses and the carbon is
4:45 actually there just to absorb the
4:47 expansion. So that's why it's called
4:49 silicon carbon. So everyone's messing
4:51 around and trying to tune it. Some
4:53 companies are willing to include a
4:55 higher and higher percentage of silicon
4:56 because that lets you get a higher and
4:58 higher battery capacity in the same
5:00 space, but that's also pushing the
5:01 limits. And so they also have to do
5:03 their best to manage the inevitable
5:05 swelling to counteract that. It's just
5:07 physics or chemistry. I've I've actually
5:10 been told there are certain devices that
5:13 have a literal steel cage around the
5:15 battery to prevent it from swelling. And
5:18 then the cracking in this case is
5:19 potentially some type of internal damage
5:21 to the battery, which is obviously
5:23 really bad news. And worst case scenario
5:26 is some type of thermal runaway, which
5:28 obviously nobody wants that happening in
5:29 their pocket. And so you might be
5:30 thinking, oh, what about all the
5:32 testing? Like that's one of the most
5:32 common things we hear from these
5:34 companies is they're always able to
5:36 verify something like, you know, 80%
5:39 battery capacity after a thousand charge
5:41 cycles. So trying to give us some
5:42 confidence in the longevity of these
5:44 batteries because they've actually
5:46 tested that many cycles. Like that
5:47 should make it survive years of regular
5:50 use. But batteries obviously go through
5:53 a lot more in regular use than just
5:55 charge cycles. Like they deal with a lot
5:57 of outside heat and cold. They get
5:59 dropped sometimes. There's pressure
6:02 changes, there's humidity changes, etc.,
6:04 etc. It's a long list. So, testing is
6:05 really important, of course, but it's
6:07 really hard to account for all the
6:08 variables that a battery might
6:10 experience over a long period of time.
6:12 In one of my conversations, my source
6:14 mentions that with all the thorough
6:17 testing going on, getting issues down to
6:21 a rate of under one in 250,000
6:23 feels pretty good. Like if you have an
6:26 error rate of something that's under one
6:28 in 250,000, that's a very rare issue and
6:31 you should be good to go. But at Samsung
6:34 or Apple's scale, if it's tens of
6:37 millions of phones, that could still not
6:39 be good enough. That could still be a
6:41 dozen exploding Note 7s like it was in
6:44 2016. So since there isn't quite enough
6:46 real world data yet, especially over
6:48 longer periods of time, some companies
6:51 are choosing to just sit it out for now
6:53 and continue developing regular
6:54 lithium-ion batteries. And you know,
6:56 remember those companies I mentioned at
6:57 the beginning that are all not using
6:59 silicon carbon, the Samsung's, the
7:02 Apples, the Google's, they're all huge
7:03 companies, but there's also something
7:04 else they all have in common, which is
7:07 they all operate or at least have a big
7:09 presence in America. And I bring this up
7:11 because we've talked about this before.
7:13 The US especially is a very software
7:14 focused market. There's all this
7:17 ecosystem lock in and inherently less
7:19 hardware competition. People just want
7:21 the blue bubbles at this point. So, if
7:22 people aren't going to buy the new
7:24 iPhone because of a silicon carbon
7:27 battery or they're not switching off of
7:29 the iPhone because of some other phone
7:32 silicon carbon battery, then there is no
7:35 reason for Apple to take that risk yet.
7:37 But in other markets where people can
7:39 just use WhatsApp and be happy about it,
7:41 then there's way more hardware
7:42 competition and people are willing to
7:45 switch. So if one phone has a 40% bigger
7:46 battery because of some new emerging
7:48 technology and the other one feels like
7:50 they're being left behind, people will
7:52 move to that. So yeah, this will be
7:54 fascinating to watch it play out. You
7:56 know, today still in 2026, silicon
7:58 carbon batteries are still a bleeding
8:00 edge technology. They're still a little
8:03 bit riskier and lithium-ion batteries
8:05 are still the safe bet. But there's this
8:07 divide now. So, we'll have to keep an
8:10 eye on how these silicon carbon phones
8:12 actually age. You know, the first ones
8:14 came out about 3 years ago, but there's
8:15 been a lot more out in the real world in
8:18 the past year. And so, we'll check in.
8:19 Get subscribed, and maybe in a year or
8:20 two, we'll have a lot more real world
8:22 data. We'll check in. We'll see how
8:24 things are going. Thanks for watching.
8:28 Catch you in the next one. Peace. >> [music]
