The average phone now has a bigger battery than the S26 Ultra

HONOR was the first major smartphone brand to embrace silicon-carbon batteries, and the likes of Xiaomi, OPPO, OnePlus, and vivo quickly followed suit. This has led to phones with gigantic battery capacities. So is it any surprise that the average battery capacity of a smartphone has apparently exploded this year?

Counterpoint Research reported that the average battery capacity of a smartphone reached 5,291mAh in January 2026. That’s a 400mAh year-on-year increase and reportedly makes it the biggest yearly increase since December 2021. This also means that the average phone’s battery capacity in 2026 is now larger than the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s 5,000mAh battery.

The best-selling smartphone with a 6,000mAh battery or larger was the Redmi 15C 4G, which uses a conventional lithium-ion battery. Meanwhile, the HONOR X70 5G had an 8,300mAh battery, making it the largest on the list. Six out of the top 10 phones on the list offered silicon-carbon batteries. Furthermore, six of the phones were China-exclusive devices.

Counterpoint senior analyst Harshit Rastogi explained that the prevalence of China-exclusive phones on the list highlighted the region’s “rapid advances in battery technology.” He added that OEMs also tend to debut phones with huge batteries in their home market first.

It’s also worth noting that regions such as Europe and North America have strict regulations regarding the transport of devices with large batteries. This often means that devices in China have significantly larger batteries than European or US variants.

“As a result, China has opened a lead of over 1,000mAh in average battery capacity compared to the rest of the world,” the analyst concluded.

In any event, we’re glad to see a huge increase in average battery capacity. Now, if only Google, Apple, and Samsung would embrace silicon-carbon batteries.