Stop worrying about your phone’s battery

Go take a shower. Get dressed. Make some coffee and breakfast. Because in the time that it takes to do any of these things, the Xiaomi 11i 5G Hypercharge will have charged up and readied itself to face the day just as much as you would have. We’ve been waiting for advancements in battery or charging technology that will mean we can stop being preoccupied with our phone batteries running out, and it’s finally happening now.

The Xiaomi 11i 5G HyperCharge heads a series of premium phones planned by Xiaomi. A slightly scaled down version is just known as the Xiaomi 11i.

I’m checking out the 11i 5G HyperCharge for first impressions. And I must say, I’m not sure what to call it for short, the Mi branding having been done away with. There is some amount of discussion online on this phone actually being a rebranded device, the Redmi Note 11 Pro at a higher price.

Be that as it may, the Xiaomi 11i HyperCharge comes out of a regular but chunky box. You can tell you’re getting a charger in the box. In fact, it turns out to be a heavyweight 120W brick that could do some serious damage if thrown at someone. You also get all the other regular stuff like a back cover, SIM tool, literature and oh, a phone.

Xiaomi 11i Hypercharge

The 11i Hypercharge has a solid and slightly iPhone-like feel to it. It’s flat and weighs in at 204 grams — a large and substantial sort of phone. The plastic frame holds a glass body with an interesting effect on the back. I have the olive green variant to review but I couldn’t swear to it as it’s a subtle shade mix. It looks elegant and premium and doesn’t display smudges easily. It’s also smooth, matte and slippery, so the case may come in handy. Also making a statement on the back is an extra large camera rectangle. It looks like there are more cameras than the phone can handle, but it’s really a triple camera set-up on the rear.

Fifteen minutes

The first thing I checked out, of course, is the charging claim. I drained the battery until it was just 1 per cent and headed to Settings to ask the phone to boost charging. By default, this feature is not enabled in case you don’t want to always use such fast charging. Xiaomi says it’s safe enough and doesn’t harm the battery health or the phone. I then plugged the phone into the wall socket and waited to see what the 120W charging would be like.

To my amazement, a mere five minutes, later the battery was already at 75 per cent. At ten minutes, 93 per cent. And when I looked again at fifteen minutes, it had finished up with 100 per cent. The device only got as warm as any other and certainly much less than the phone I use everyday. I also found battery life to be very good, both on usage and standby. For the most part, I had to work hard to deplete it over the day.

Xiaomi splits the 4,500 mAh battery in two and charges them at the same time, and uses some graphene and other tech to achieve the HyperCharge. It uses Dual Charge pumps to adjust the voltage and amperage to the optimal ratio and lowers voltage and raises amperage to overcome conventional voltage limitations to allow for higher wattage intake. In addition to this, Vapour Chamber cooling allows for quick heat dissipation to ensure an efficient charging cycle — if that makes any sense. In short, it works. What’s more, Xiaomi says even after 800 charge cycles, the battery will retain 80 per cent of its health.

Xiaomi 11i Hypercharge

There are several other features that make this phone worthwhile. The cameras, which look intimidatingly abundant on the back, include a 108MP rear camera with an 8MP wide angle and a 2MP macro. The front camera is a 16MP. The photos are largely good but not memorable.

Dream screen

The screen is a stellar AMOLED 6.67 inch FullHD one. The screen feels fast and fluid with its 120Hz refresh rate (you can manually drop to 60Hz) and 360Hz touch sampling. This display does a lot to lend this phone an air of premium-ness. It has Gorilla Glass 5 protection and an IP53 splash resistance rating. There’s a barely noticeable camera punch hole centre top. It’s a great screen for watching movies and consuming other content, specially as it has nice, loud and deep stereo speakers on top and below making for even balanced sound. The fingerprint sensor is on the power button; there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack, the IR blaster that users will not forgive the removal of, and a hybrid SIM tray. Not much room to complain here.

The 11i HyperCharge runs on the MediaTek Dimensity 920 5G which is fast and powerful suiting both everyday tasks and gaming. You get either 6GB or 8GB RAM variants with 128GB storage. The phone’s software is still Android 11 with MiUI-12.5.1 which, on this device, feels neat and matured. I didn’t face any annoyances with it or while generally using the phone though it is still very much a customisation-filled and busy skin.

Xiaomi 11i Hypercharge has two variants — 6GB + 128GB at ₹26,999 and 8GB + 128GB at ₹28,999. The plain 11i differs only in the extent of charging for a bigger battery, a 5,000mAh battery charging at 67W. In all other respects, it’s identical.

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