Why Realme is betting big on battery endurance over fast charging with Realme P4 Power: In conversation with Francis Wong
- World’s first smartphone with 240W SuperVOOC charging (Realme GT 3)
- World’s first smartphone with 64MP camera (Realme XT)
- World’s first smartphone with cold-sensitive colour-changing technology (Realme 14 Pro)
- India’s first 5G smartphone (Realme X50 Pro)
The list goes on… but the industry firsts that Realme has introduced aren’t stopping anytime soon. The brand is going big (quite literally) this year as it introduces India’s first smartphone with a gigantic 10,001mAh battery. Dubbed the Realme P4 Power, the handset will usher in a new revolution in more ways than one. And to understand how, we got a chance to talk to Francis Wong, Chief Marketing Officer, Realme India. Read on for the excerpts of the conversation…
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Why 10,000mAh matters more than charging speed
Upon asking Wong whether users really need a phone with such a massive battery capacity, especially when we have so many fast charging solutions, he highlighted that better specs don’t necessarily change user behaviour. He responded, “we have launched Realme GT Neo 3 with 150W charging. That charging speed is very fast. In around 30 minutes, your phone gets fully charged. However, after we launched that phone, we figured out that consumers, still charged their phones when they sleep.”
Elaborating further, he said “even if it’s just five minutes, they still don’t want to spend that time seeking a charging cable. When they’re outside, they need to think about where they’re going to charge the phone. So, I think the consumer’s biggest concern is not on the speed of charging, but the size of the battery. They don’t want to frequently charge the phone, no matter how fast it is. They want to charge the phone only once in a day, maybe at night when they go to sleep. When they wake up, they have a full day’s worth of juice.”
From concept to conviction
Realme didn’t launch the phone all of a sudden. It first validated the consumer demand with the concept phones. Wong said “We showcased a 15,000 mAh battery concept phone. We had a 320W fast-charging concept phone. So, we have always been innovating in battery and charging technologies. So that technology has always been there. By the time we introduced the concept phone, we saw the media reaction and consumer feedback. They all loved these ideas, and that boosted our confidence to commercially launch it. So we had this project in the pipelibe since September last year. Then by December, we had our first model.”
“We spent like three months to take it from a concept to reality,” he added.
Engineering the impossible: 10,000mAh phone without the bulk
Considering the Realme P4 Power is slimmer than most 10,000mAh power banks, we were curious to understand how the brand managed this engineering feat. Wong replied “One is the battery we have been using. This time is the silicon carbon material. So, the contents of the silicon have been improved to more than 10% (16%). This is a new generation of battery. With more silicon added, the battery power intensity will be there. So, it reduces the size of the battery. And then we have been using the curved display. So that it’s visually looking slimmer and more premium.”
Thermals and managing the real-world heat
We also dug deeper into understanding how the phone manages the thermals, considering the size of the battery. Wong assured us that there’s no fundamental difference in the heating because of the battery capacity. He also explained that “one is the VC cooling is there. Another thing is, we have this bypass charging technology. For example, when you’re putting the phone aside and charging it, you don’t care if it heats up because you’re not using the phone, right? When you’re using the phone and charging it, it becomes a problem if the phone heats up.
We have this bypassing technology which directly lets the charging cable bypass your battery and directly power the phone so that you will not feel that kind of heating. If the battery is being charged at one time and discharged at the same time, then you’re going to feel the heat.”
Longevity as a feature: the promise of battery health
You must be wondering how the huge battery capacity contributes to the phone’s longevity. But Realme is vocal about the same with the P4 Power, so much so that it’s promising – “If within four years your battery health drops to 80% or below, you get a free replacement.”
We wanted to understand the thought behind this, and Wong answered, “we are confident this battery can last for eight years, so that’s why we can give a four-year guarantee. You can charge this phone 1,600 times. Earlier, the highest industry number was 800. In 2025, it became 1,200. So, 1,200 right now is the industry benchmark, but this phone is 1,600, so it’s more than that. Plus, it’s 10,000 mAh battery phone, so the time you need to charge it becomes less. That’s why it’s actually prolonged to eight years of health (in typical usage conditions).”
Who is Realme P4 Power actually for
Wong said that “when you’re running your daily routines, 7,000mAh or 6,000mAh might be enough. However, this phone is for those non-daily situations. For example, when you’re having a heavy gaming in some of your days, like weekends, or when you’re using social media for long hours. For example, you’re on a business trip. For those kinds of situations, you’re going to need a big battery.”
“We want consumers to say goodbye to battery anxiety. They don’t have to worry about charging and anything. 10,000 mAh gives you a full guarantee that in a day before you fall asleep, you don’t need to charge at all, ” he added further.
What’s next for the Realme P series
“P-Series stands for Pioneer, pioneering the new technologies,” Wong told us.
Expounding upon that, he said, “by launching P Series, we want to send a message to the audience that Realme will always be the leader in battery technologies, whether it’s fast charging or the size of battery. So, the main audience for this phone, I believe, will be those heavy users, mainly students. They have a lot of free time. They use the phone much more frequently than any one of us. So, this phone is for them. However, starting from this phone, throughout the year, we’re going to have a lot of 8,000mAh battery phones and other 10,000mAh battery phones to be launched.”
He concluded “this year, you’re going to see Realme staying a notch above the competition on the size of the battery. So, no matter whether you are a heavy user or you are a normal user, you are white-collar, early career builders, you can choose among 8,000 (mAh), 9,000 (mAh), 10,000 (mAh battery phones).”
