Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra under threat – Honor's next phone could have double the battery size

Honor could be working on a phone with a huge 10,690mAh battery, double the capacity of the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra. It's likely to be listed as 11,000mAh if it makes it into a future phone.

The Chinese brand is known for its large capacities, with a 6,270mAh battery in the Honor Magic 8 Pro. But the company already has devices with higher capacities, including the Honor Power 2 with 10,080mAh of juice.

The details come from Digital Chat Station on Weibo (via Huawei Central), but at this point, it's not clear what phone this might be heading into.

Battery capacities have generally been increasing across devices, mostly driven by the adoption of silicon-carbon technology. That's seen the likes of Honor, OnePlus, and Xiaomi launching devices with high capacities.

That's not been the trend in the mainstream, however, with Samsung, Apple and Google sticking to capacities around 5,000mAh, while rivals might be offering around 7,000mAh in flagship phones.

Honor's 11,000mAh phone is likely to be a model that's specifically pitched as having a huge battery rather than its next flagship phone, but it's still a huge step forward in capacity compared to traditional Li-ion battery tech.

Remarkably, while these higher capacities are being stuffed into phones, high charging speeds are also retained – the Honor Power 2 offers 80W wired charging, for example.

The increase in battery capacities means that some devices now reasonably last over two days. I recently reviewed the Honor Magic 8 Lite with a 7,500mAh battery and was really impressed with the battery life.

What we don't currently know is how long these batteries last. Sticking to traditional methods is usually to preserve battery longevity to make sure it lasts as long as possible. That's also the reason that some brands – Apple, Samsung and Google for example – use slower charging speeds. It maintains battery health over a longer period of time.

A YouGov study from 2023 found that battery life was the top priority for new smartphone customers, regardless of how much they were planning to spend on a new phone.