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The OnePlus 11 is already available in China, so while it won’t launch globally until 7 February, we already know most of it, including its impressive 100W charging speeds. But that might not be the case in the US.
According to both Snoopy Tech (opens in new tab) and Max Jambor (opens in new tab) – a few speakers with good track record (via 91 mobiles (opens in new tab)) – the US version of the OnePlus 11 is limited to 80W charging.
The first of those speakers even backed up their claim with what appears to be an official marketing copy for the US model, which also mentions 16GB of RAM. There’s also a 16GB version for China, but sometimes different regions get different configurations, so it’s good to know that the US is likely to get this high-spec version.
The charging is disappointing, though, but not overly surprising as the same thing happened with the OnePlus 10 Pro – most versions of that phone were able to charge up to 80W, but the US model topped out at 65W.
So at least 80W here would be an upgrade over the OnePlus 10 Pro’s charging speeds for US buyers, but it’s a shame it doesn’t match the global 100W version, which OnePlus says will fully charge in just 25 minutes. Of course, we’ll take this claim with a grain of salt until we can test it ourselves, but it seems likely.
Analysis: Why are US buyers getting a version with slower charging?
The decision to offer slower charging with US versions of the OnePlus 11 won’t be taken at random. On the contrary, if this is the case, it is almost certainly a technology problem.
The reason the OnePlus 10 Pro charges slower in the US is that the 80W SUPERVOOC charging technology used by the phone is designed to support 220V-240V power outlets as that’s the standard range used in Europe , China and India.
However, in the US, most outlets are 110V or 120V, and the technology doesn’t fully support working with this lower voltage, limiting charging speed.
Presumably we see the same problem here: OnePlus is using improved 100W SuperVOOC charging technology in the OnePlus 11, which probably still doesn’t fully support 110V or 120V, so the charging speed is faster than 80W SUPERVOOC, but not as fast as other regions.
This is presumably a problem that could have been solved, but possibly not by OnePlus itself, as the SuperVOOC technology was created by its big brother Oppo and their parent company BBK Electronics. Given Oppo’s limited presence in the US, this probably wasn’t a high priority for the company.
Still, it’s a shame because it makes what is probably one of the best Android phones a bit worse in that particular region.