Honor launches the X9e Pro in Malaysia on Thursday 24th September. The phone has an 11,000mAh battery, 80W wired charging and 27W reverse wired charging.
Honor’s own teasers confirm the date, the time, the four colours and a 108MP main camera, which it prints on the camera ring as “MATRIX 108MP X SERIES”. The battery and charging numbers come from Malaysian coverage published ahead of the event, not from Honor. The chipset and the price are being held back until Thursday.
How you fit 11,000mAh into a phone
An ordinary phone battery is lithium-ion with a graphite anode. The anode is the electrode that holds the lithium while the phone is charged, and graphite puts a hard ceiling on how much charge fits into a given volume. Silicon holds far more lithium in the same space, so replacing part of the graphite with silicon buys you capacity for free. The catch is that silicon swells as it charges, which cracks the electrode and kills the cell within a year or two. Silicon-carbon batteries, written Si/C, lock the silicon into a carbon scaffold that absorbs the swelling.
That is how Honor put 8,300mAh into the X9d last year in a body that weighs 193g and measures 7.76mm, and it is why 11,000mAh does not have to mean a thick phone you notice in your pocket.
Honor has already shipped this battery
Honor launched the X80 Pro Max in China on 22nd June with the same 11,000mAh capacity. When we ranked the biggest phone batteries on sale at the end of August. The X80 Pro Max still sits at the top of the list. That phone weighs 203g, is 8.08mm thick, runs a Snapdragon 6 Gen 5, has a 6.8-inch AMOLED screen rated at 10,000 nits and starts at CNY 1,999, about KES 38,000.
Two of the X9e Pro’s reported numbers match it exactly:
- the 11,000mAh cell and
- the 27W reverse wired charging.
Two spec numbers do not.
- The X80 Pro Max charges at 90W against the X9e Pro’s reported 80W, and
- It has a 50MP main camera where the X9e Pro has 108MP.
What the X9d told us
We talked about the X9d back in April. In our review, it finished the first day on 62% with six hours of screen-on time. On day two, after another four hours and 17 minutes of screen time, it had 26% left and was estimating another 16 hours and 35 minutes. All of that came from a battery a significant size smaller than the one going into the X9e Pro.
Charging is where the bigger jump is. The X9d takes 66W. It can reverse charge other devices at 7.5W over a cable. The X9e Pro is reported at 80W charging and 27W reverse.
The X9d is sold here at about KES 55,000. In Malaysia the X9d launched at RM 1,499, and memory prices have risen through this year, so we expect the X9e Pro to launch above that. If it does, the Kenyan retail price will start above KES 55,000.
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