Insane Explorer Edition Phone Charges 10x Faster Than Galaxy S22 or iPhone 14: We Test World’s Fastest 210W Charging

by

Some companies like to keep things to the point of boredom, while others like to push the boundaries and experiment with crazy new features, and this might be the craziest one we’ve tried recently.

This phone is the Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition, a $400 mid-range phone that not only comes with a free charger in the box, but is far superior to what other companies are asking you to pay for. The charger itself looks more like a laptop charger, is about the size and weight of two regular phone chargers, and has a single USB-C port. Aside from its larger size, it looks surprisingly ordinary considering its clearly extraordinary capabilities.

It can pump out an incredible 210 watts of power to your phone, charging the battery in a full nine minutes. Yes, we said ‘nine’, not ‘ninety’ and not even ‘nineteen’!

Of course, we had to go hands-on with the Redmi Note 12 Explorer and we started with our test!

Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition (210W) charging speed test:

  • in 3 minutes – 38% charge
  • in 5 minutes – 58% charge
  • in 9 minutes – 86 percent.
  • FULL charge took less than 15 minutes

The results are interesting! We started the test with the phone at exactly 2% battery charge and immediately got an on-screen confirmation of 210W Max, which pretty much assured us that we were indeed charging at maximum speed.

It’s also interesting how the last percentage point filled up at almost minute one, confirming that the charge does indeed slow down towards the end of the cycle.

By the way, we think all phones should display a similar message to tell you how fast they are charging, it will surely be very useful when choosing the optimal charger, won’t you?

Why did we get slightly slower results than advertised?

But back to the results. Why did we get a full charge in almost 15 minutes when Xiaomi only promises 9 minutes? Well, it should be taken into account that smartphone manufacturers use absolutely ideal conditions for these measurements. This probably means that Xiaomi was charging the phone with it turned off while we turned it on, and secondly, it never woke the phone during the charging process and we kept waking the screen to check the battery level. These may seem like small interventions, but they slow down the charging process.

Another big concern for many people with such fast charging is that it can suffer long-term battery life. In other worlds, it is said that fast charging also destroys the battery faster and shortens its life. But that’s not the case, according to various phone manufacturers that use similar fast charging techniques.

The trick is that most companies use larger chargers with special chips, so most of the heat dissipates in the charger instead of the phone, saving the phone’s battery from damage. Some additional techniques are also used, but the end result is that the battery still lasts longer than the usual 500 charge cycles that usually come as standard. So the cliché is actually false. Fast charging doesn’t actually degrade the battery faster, at least according to this official data.
As for this particular Redmi Note 12 Explorer, it uses a GaN charger, which stands for Gallium Nitride, a fancy new material that allows for these speeds and charger sizes. A closer look reveals that it can deliver 20 volts and 10.5 amps, so multiply those two numbers and you get a total of 210 watts of power delivery.

At the end of the day, this technology is very interesting and we think Xiaomi is really nailing it. Why not call this one “Magic Charge” or something more exciting to show the world that you have this advanced new technology!

Redmi Note 12 Explorer: A solid $400 phone

The Redmi Note 12 Explorer is now officially available and retails for around $400.

It’s a pretty standard smartphone slate with a 6.7-inch 1080p OLED display and a higher-end MediaTek chip inside, but it also packs another cool new tech, a 200-megapixel main camera that promises exceptional video and image quality. And here’s a quick breakdown of the specs.

Redmi Note 12 Explorer Specifications:

  • Dimensions 162.9 x 76 x 9 mm, weight 207.5 g
  • MediaTek Dimensity 1080 processor
  • 8GB RAM, 256GB UFS 2.2 storage
  • 200 MP main camera + 8 MP ultra-wide + 2 MP macro
  • 4300 mAh battery
  • 210W wired charging
  • Android 12 with MIUI 13

For those interested in this camera, the real benefit of the 200 megapixel camera is actually not the resolution itself, but something called pixel binning. Basically, Xiaomi combines 16 pixels into one super pixel and thus has much more information and can achieve a very clean image with little noise in the dark. It’s a clever trick that the new Galaxy S23 Ultra should also use.

And the Note 12 Explorer’s main camera does a very good job. But it’s still not a camera phone, and you can really tell when you’re using the ultra-wide camera because of the poor quality, for example.

Everything else, this Explorer Edition Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 is just a solid $400 mid-ranger. The MediaTek 1080 chip inside is actually faster than most other phones in this price range, you get 8GB of RAM, which is again more than most phones at this price, and you even get 256GB of internal storage.

But it’s those new technologies that impress. It’s a preview of the future, where flagship phones can also charge in around 10 minutes. We think it’s really transformative, it changes the way you use your phone and it helps to know that it won’t drain your battery any faster.

So what do you think about this technology? Would you pay for a phone that fully charges in just 10 minutes? How important is it to you?

Leave a Comment