Apple and Samsung will be duking it out on the battlefield of thin and elegant handsets in their next flagship phone cycle, it seems. Apple will reportedly be replacing the iPhone 17 Plus with an iPhone 17 Air handset, while Samsung will issue a thin Galaxy S25 a full quarter before the iPhone Air release.
The field of thin and powerful handsets is already being plowed, though, by none other than their arch rivals the Chinese phone making juggernauts Oppo and OnePlus. Yes, the thin iPhone 17 and S25 will be obsolete even before they launch, judging from the Oppo Find X8 series phones that recently underwent a global release.
The flagship Pro phone clocks in at 0.32-inch thickness, a tad over that of the rumored iPhone 17 Air and the thinnest member of the S25 series, but the X8 goes below 8mm thickness, just like the rumored thinnest 2025 phones by Apple and Samsung.
Elegance is only one of the Oppo Find X8 series virtues, though, as they pack giant batteries that top out at nearly 6,000 mAh, a capacity that so far has only been a prerogative of niche two-day-battery phones with middling specs.
The Find X8 Pro is a tad over 8mm thin but packs a nearly 6,000 mAh battery. | Image credit – Oppo
Those are usually with measly display, camera, and processing power specs to make room for the big pack and long battery life, while the Find X8 series are full-fledged flagships with second-gen 3nm processor and periscope zoom cameras.
Thin is in and carries a giant battery
The Oppo Find X8 Pro, for instance, not only rivals the iPhone 16 Pro Max and Galaxy S24 Ultra in key specifications, but also beats them in terms of design. For starters, it houses a humongous 5,910 mAh battery pack, a 20% increase over the largest batteries in flagship phones like the S24 Ultra, all the while it is much thinner and lighter.
This battery pack is the largest one that can be fit in the remaining space after the quad 50MP camera set that includes two periscope zoom cameras has gone in, and after all bezels, including the pesky bottom one where the display cable is tucked have been shrunk to a uniform size.
That is a pretty remarkable feat to pull off, but with the X8 Oppo did one better, shrinking all bezels to a uniform 1.45mm size, the smallest on any flagship and about what was rumored for the iPhone 16 Pro series and never materialized. It, too, comes with a giant for its 6.6-inch display size and sub-8mm girth battery of a 5630 mAh capacity.
Despite its remarkably thin profile of 7.85mm, Find X8 has a huge, ultra-beating 5630mAh battery, made possible by OPPO's innovative silicon-carbon battery technology. By increasing battery density by over 10%, Find X8 can last more than a full day on a single charge, even with hours of watching, capturing, messaging, swiping and calling.
Oppo, November 2024
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What is silicon carbon battery tech?
Notice the technology that made placing battery packs with iPhone and Galaxy-beating capacity in a thin and light frame? That's the novel silicon carbon electrode battery technology that Oppo has used for the first time.
Well, novel is not the right word, as it has been in development for a good while, and is just now getting produced at a mass scale. Needless to say, it is only available in phones from Chinese brands for now, such as Oppo, OnePlus, Xiaomi, or Honor.
It is the culmination of years of research that aimed to replace the typical graphite anode with one made of silicon. Silicon can store up to 24x more lithium than conventional graphite electrodes, allowing for much higher energy density in the same battery footprint.
It is so good at storing lithium atoms, though - four for each silicon, as opposed to six graphite needed to store one lithium atom - that it swelled and was prone to hairline cracking during the multiple expansion and contraction cycles. Through trial and error, however, researchers found a way to go around its limitations by introducing the silicon carbon materials that now makes the electrode of phones like the Oppo Find X8 series.
As a result, thin and light flagship phones with 6,000 mAh packs that can last a weekend away from the charger are now a viable possibility and Apple or Samsung will have a lot of catching up to do not only in terms of charging speeds, but also in battery life of its thinnest iPhone 17 Air and S25 Slim.
When those two hit the market in 2025, they might already be obsolete in terms of the volumetric density of their specs, especially when compared to thin and light flagships like the fresh Oppo Find X8 series.
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Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena since 2010, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he's keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.
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