Barely time to make a cup of tea! World’s fastest charger can fully power up your phone in just 4.5 minutes

There’s nothing more frustrating than discovering your phone is running out of battery just as you’re about to head out the door.

But that inconvenience may soon be a thing of the past, as smartphone maker Realme has unveiled a charger that lets you power up your smartphone in just five minutes.

The Chinese tech maker’s new SuperSonic Charge Technology can provide a phone with up to 320W of power, 16 times more than a standard iPhone charger.

At an event this week, the company demonstrated how it could charge a 4,420mAh battery in four minutes and 30 seconds.

Unfortunately, Realme has yet to release a smartphone that can handle that much power. So it might be a while before you can fully charge your phone while making a cup of tea.

The company showcased the latest developments in fast-changing technology at Realme’s 828 Fanfest event in Shenzhen.

After just one minute of being plugged into the mains, the smartphone’s battery was already 26 percent charged. Within two minutes, the battery was already 50 percent charged.

For a smartphone with a battery that’s slightly smaller than the new Pixel 9’s, that means the battery can be fully charged in less than five minutes.

This impressive performance is possible thanks to significant improvements in both the charger and the battery itself.

Early last year, Realme set the record for the fastest charging smartphone with the GT Neo 5, which could be charged in nine and a half minutes thanks to a 240W charger.

The company’s latest ‘Pocket Cannon’ power adapter can deliver up to 320W of power to a compatible device.

During Realme’s 828 Fanfest event in Shenzhen, the company demonstrated how it could charge a phone from 1 percent to 100 percent in four and a half minutes

SuperSonic Charge technology uses a power adapter that delivers 320W (pictured), 16x more power than a standard iPhone charger.

The charger features two USB-C ports that also let you send 150W to Realme smartphones and 65W to devices like laptops.

For comparison, the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus can only be reliably charged at a maximum of 20 W, which charges the battery to 50 percent in about half an hour.

Realme says it can prevent battery burnout thanks to its ‘AirGap’ voltage transformer, which ensures that power reaches the phone at just 20 volts.

According to Realme, this uses a technology called ‘contactless electromagnetic conversion’, which allows the power supply to charge with an energy efficiency of 93 percent.

The other major innovation is Realme’s new battery, which uses four separate cells, all of which can be charged simultaneously.

Manufacturers such as Apple and Samsung generally opt for single-cell batteries because they store more energy in a compact space.

The ‘Pocket Cannon’ charger is paired with a new battery design that significantly reduces charging speeds. Pictured: Tech fans jostle to take photos of the new charger and battery

Despite using multiple cells, Realme still claims to offer a larger battery than the iPhone 15’s 3,349mAh of storage.

According to a promotional video shared by the company, this is thanks to a folded battery design inspired by satellite solar panels.

A company spokesperson said: ‘First, we ingeniously miniaturized each battery cell into layered structures to make optimal use of space and thus achieve higher capacity.

‘Secondly, we folded four battery cells into the shape of satellite panels and connected them with a flexible charging board.’

The resulting battery is also flexible, meaning it could potentially be used in a future foldable smartphone design.

Realme says the battery uses four battery cells that can all be charged simultaneously to achieve faster charging times and larger capacity

With a capacity of 4,420 mAh, Realme’s new battery has a similar charging capacity to the new Google Pixel 9 (pictured), but can be charged in just a fraction of the time

After Realme set the record for the fastest charging smartphone early last year, the record was soon broken by Redmi, another Chinese phone maker.

Less than a month after Realme set the record, Xiaomi subsidiary Redmi announced that it had developed a 300W charger.

During demonstrations, Xiaomi showed that its new technology could charge a 4100 mAh battery in about five minutes.

However, neither Xioami nor Realme have yet released phones that actually feature these new battery designs.

A Realme spokesperson told MailOnline they had no ‘official information’ on whether this would be used in new devices.

Realme also hasn’t indicated when the technology will be rolled out more widely, so it could be a while before five-minute charging is commercially available.