This Android brand put a 10,000mAh battery in its latest phone, and Samsung needs to up its game

New smartphone launches have become so common that it takes something special to really make a mark. There was a time when smartphone makers battled over who could pack the most megapixels into their phone’s camera. Now, we’re seeing something different: battery capacities. Since the advent of silicon-carbon batteries, we’ve seen capacities grow with nearly every new launch. That trend continues today with Xiaomi’s latest smartphone.

Xiaomi has launched the Redmi K100 in China, and it packs impressive specs on paper. The company has stuffed a 10,000mAh silicon-carbon battery inside the K100, giving it one of the largest batteries in a mid-range smartphone. The K100 joins the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max and the recently launched HONOR Win 2 series as phones with a 10,000mAh (or larger) battery.

Chinese manufacturers have been pushing battery capacities ever since silicon-carbon batteries first started appearing in smartphones. Meanwhile, brands like Google, Samsung, and Apple are still hovering in the 5,000mAh ballpark.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra, for example, comes with a 5,000mAh Li-ion battery. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 series marks the first time Samsung has used silicon-carbon batteries in its phones, yet the Z Fold 8 Ultra still uses a 5,000mAh battery. The Pixel 11 Pro XL also packs a 5,115mAh Li-ion battery. Clearly, Google and Samsung are lagging behind in battery capacity, especially on flagship phones that cost thousands of dollars.

It’s striking that Chinese brands are pushing the envelope on smartphone battery capacity while major companies like Samsung and Google play it safe. It might be time for the latter to adopt silicon-carbon batteries more widely and offer higher-capacity phones.

Coming back to the K100, the phone packs a Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, up to 16GB of RAM, and up to 512GB of UFS 4.1 storage. It features a 6.83-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 2,772 x 1,280 pixels, a 165Hz refresh rate, and a peak brightness of 3,500 nits.

Around the back, it features a dual-camera setup with a 50MP primary camera and an 8MP ultrawide-angle camera. The Redmi K100 is also IP69K-rated for dust and water resistance and supports Wi-Fi 7.

Redmi K100 pricing and availability

The Redmi K100 is currently available only in China, starting at 3,499 yuan (~$525). It could come to global markets as a POCO F-series phone in the future. We’ve seen this happen before, with the Redmi K90 and Redmi K80 launching globally as the POCO F8 Pro and the POCO F7 Pro, respectively. That said, this is mere speculation at this point and should be taken with a grain of salt.