Oppo announces 150W fast charging, coming soon to a OnePlus phone

Oppo has announced a new 150W SuperVOOC fast-charging standard today which it claims will be able to charge a 4,500mAh battery from 1 percent to 50 percent charge in just five minutes, and to 100 percent in just 15. It’s going to appear first in an unnamed smartphone from sub-brand OnePlus in the second quarter of this year. OnePlus has also offered an update on the global launch of the OnePlus 10 Pro, which came to China earlier this year.

OnePlus didn’t offer any more details on the first phone to feature this technology, such as whether it will be a flagship phone or a part of the company’s midrange Nord lineup, but it said the technology will be on display at its booth during this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Realme is also announcing a technology it’s branding as 150W UltraDart. The timing is unlikely to be a coincidence given that Realme is owned by BBK Electronics, which is Oppo’s (and OnePlus’) parent company. Realme is making similar claims about charging speeds, only it actually announced the name of the first device to use the tech: the GT Neo 3.

150W fast charging is almost double the amount of power as the 80W fast charging OnePlus and Oppo have been using in their recent flagships. Oppo did announce a 125W SuperVOOC fast charging standard in 2020, but it’s yet to appear on a widely released device. Meanwhile Xiaomi’s recent 11T Pro shipped with 120W fast charging, which Xiaomi said could fully charge its 5,000mAh battery in 17 minutes.

SuperVOOC has historically been Oppo’s branding for its fast-charging tech, while OnePlus has used Warp charge. But following the merger between the two companies, in which OnePlus has effectively become an Oppo sub-brand, it’s stopped using the Warp branding for its fast chargers in favor of SuperVOOC.

Preempting concerns about the effect of such high wattage charging on a device’s battery, OnePlus says that a battery should still maintain as much as 80 percent of its rated capacity after 1,600 charge cycles with 150W SuperVOOC thanks to its “Battery Health Engine” (BHE) technology. It’s also cross compatible with other fast-charging protocols such as Programmable Power Supply (PPS), Power Delivery (PD), and Quick Charge (QC), to allow SuperVOOC to fast-charge non-OnePlus devices, though without the guaranteed 150W charging speed.

Interestingly, Oppo specifically claims that it’s charging speeds are from 1 percent rather than a completely drained battery at 0 percent. That’s presumably because it doesn’t want to include the amount of time it takes to get from 0 to 1.

Image: OnePlus
The OnePlus 10 Pro, which will launch internationally by the end of March.

The announcements come as OnePlus is preparing to launch its latest flagship device, the OnePlus 10 Pro, internationally, following its release in China earlier this year. OnePlus now says it hopes to release the phone worldwide by the end of March. An exact global launch date is yet to be announced.

In a roundtable interview with The Verge, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau explains that the reason OnePlus has chosen to prioritize a China-only launch for the OnePlus 10 Pro is to try and better compete in the country’s crowded smartphone market. But he also added that it’s easier to release phones more quickly in the country because there are less approval processes its software needs to go through with partners like network carriers.

Finally, OnePlus says it’s interest in producing affordable handsets isn’t changing, and that it plans to release “its most affordable 5G smartphone in India and Europe yet” this year.