During a technology industry conference in Japan at the weekend Huawei showed off a new battery that can reportedly give users a 50% charge in only five minutes without damaging the battery.

The technology has been developed by Huawei subsidiary Watt Lab and was demonstrated with a 600mAh and a 3 000mAh battery.

The 3 000mAh battery was able to reach 48% charge after only five minutes of charging in a prototype charging bay after being removed from a Huawei smartphone. The smaller 600mAh battery reached 68% charge in just two minutes. To prove the claim, Huawei released the video below.

Huawei manages to make this all possible by adding graphite atoms to the anode of a conventional lithium ion battery used in many popular smartphones today.

According to a report on Computer World, Huawei has said that despite this lightning fast recharge time the life and size of the battery is not affected by this new technology.

Unfortunately we have not been told by Huawei when we can expect to see this technology being implemented in smartphones, but this may stem the tide of terrible battery life and having to wait around for hours as your phone charges.

[Image CC by 2.0 – Takashi Hososhima]