Silicon carbon battery technology offers significantly higher energy density, enabling larger batteries in thinner phones, but major manufacturers like Apple and Samsung are hesitant to adopt it due to concerns about swelling, longevity, and real-world performance under diverse conditions.
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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 [music] 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. >> [music]
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