In a quiet workshop, rows of robotic arms move swiftly, grasping each smartphone component with pinpoint accuracy; data streams flow in real time between the cloud and devices, while Honor’s self-developed “Luban” industrial large model analyzes and optimizes nearly 500 component feature points at 125,000 times per second; AI vision systems, powered by 3D algorithms, achieve ultra-high precision control of 0.001 milligrams for glue application weight… Located in Pingshan, Shenzhen, this Honor smart manufacturing factory vividly demonstrates the global trend of advanced manufacturing evolution.
The value of smart manufacturing ultimately embodies in products. Among them, the battery, as the “energy heart” of a smartphone, its technological breakthrough directly defines the bottom line of user experience — battery life and safety. Why does Honor tackle the deep waters of this fundamental field? What are its innovative methodology and industrial significance? To answer these questions, the reporter had an in-depth conversation with Lu Qingyun, Honor’s battery expert, attempting to decode how Honor, within the limited space of a smartphone, writes a key model for global smart manufacturing through systematic innovation in materials, processes and management.
Focusing on Global Users’ Battery Anxiety, Collaborating with Industry Partners to Tackle Core Challenges
Nowadays, battery life anxiety has become a global resonance. Lu Qingyun revealed that Honor’s decision to take batteries as an important differentiating breakthrough is not only an inevitable result of insight into users’ strong needs, but also a reflection of confidence in its own technical capabilities. “With more and more smartphone functions and the development of on-device AI, the demand for smartphone power consumption is higher, so battery life has always been a pain point for users around the world. On the other hand, Honor’s battery R&D team has solid technical capabilities.”
However, improving battery life is far from a simple physical expansion. In the increasingly thin and light smartphone design, every small progress in battery technology means a difficult journey across multiple boundaries such as materials science, electrochemistry and precision manufacturing. Talking about the technical barriers of Honor’s Qinghai Lake Battery, Lu Qingyun said that it is a systematic project involving materials, systems, processes, structures and battery management behind it. Among them, the engineering application of silicon-carbon anode materials is a prominent bottleneck.
Silicon has a high theoretical specific capacity, making it an ideal direction to improve battery energy density. However, its expansion degree during charging and discharging is greater than that of traditional batteries, threatening the cycle life and safety of the battery. “The academic community focuses more on basic scientific research, and there is almost no engineering experience in applying silicon-carbon anode materials to smartphone batteries,” Lu recalled. Faced with the dual pressure of no precedent to follow and an imminent launch deadline, Honor’s R&D team chose “two-way collaboration” and “active cross-border integration”.
On one hand, Honor has achieved two-way collaboration with top global industry partners, joining hands with multiple industrial chain partners to drive collaborative innovation; on the other hand, it has transformed its in-depth understanding of global user needs and experiences into corresponding battery technology requirements, taking the initiative to step out of the battery field to seek solutions worldwide. Based on “two-way collaboration” and “active cross-border integration”, Honor developed a “super glue” for the Qinghai Lake Battery, which better adheres the materials and reduces battery expansion.
Transforming laboratory breakthroughs into mass-produced products requires collaborative efforts in processes and structures. On the production line of Honor’s smart manufacturing factory, the self-developed “Luban” industrial large model can analyze nearly 500 component feature points at one time, and through parallel computing of 125,000 times per second, it matches the optimal plan for each component in real time, realizing a precision leap from millimeter level to sub-micron level in the manufacturing process. Especially in the assembly of precision components such as batteries, AI vision systems, with the help of 3D algorithms, can achieve ultra-high precision control of 0.001 milligrams for glue application weight.
This is not only a leap in manufacturing precision, but also a guarantee for the stable implementation of cutting-edge material concepts. Lu Qingyun emphasized that the birth of the Qinghai Lake Battery is the crystallization of team collaboration, reflecting Honor’s full-chain innovation in battery materials, systems, structures, processes and battery management. In the eyes of industry insiders, through the open innovation model of “enterprise leadership + supply chain collaboration”, Honor has promoted the large-scale application of silicon-carbon anode technology in the global industry, making it the industry mainstream and driving the common upgrading of the entire industrial chain. It vividly interprets how technological innovation fosters new quality productive forces and empowers high-quality industrial development worldwide.
Upholding Safety as the Cornerstone, Precisely Embracing “AI + Manufacturing”
First launched in the Honor Magic5 series in 2023, the Honor Qinghai Lake Battery has undergone a series of iterations. It is worth mentioning that on January 5 this year, Honor officially released the fully upgraded “outdoor light flagship” Honor Power2, equipped with a 10080mAh 4th-generation Qinghai Lake Battery, an increase of up to 2080mAh compared with the previous generation. While once again breaking the industry limit in battery life performance, the Honor Power2 also maintains an ultra-thin body of 7.98mm.
With the battery capacity of smartphones entering the “10,000mAh era”, safety is equally important as the improvement of energy density. Lu Qingyun made it clear: “Safety is the cornerstone concept of Honor’s battery R&D. No matter what new technology is introduced, it must be based on safety.” To this end, Honor has built a software-hardware integrated safety barrier. At the hardware level, it fundamentally suppresses risks such as expansion through an original material system; at the software and management level, its self-developed “Dujiangyan Battery Management System” integrates independently developed battery management algorithms to accurately monitor battery status, including effective control of expansion rate.
Like a sophisticated river regulation project, this system monitors in real time, distributes intelligently and prevents risks, ensuring the stability and safety of large-capacity batteries in complex usage scenarios. For the common challenge of heat dissipation in fast charging and large batteries, Honor also provides a systematic solution. By building a battery thermal model and integrating its data into the overall thermal management link of the device, efficient collaboration is achieved.
Looking to the future, Honor will maintain a forward-looking and pragmatic investment in the battery field. “Our key focus is relatively clear: on the premise of ensuring safety, making the battery larger in limited space. Honor’s criterion is that for batteries of the same size, we will continuously increase the capacity every year, and optimize battery-related features such as fast charging and service life around energy density, so as to bring better battery life experience to global users,” Lu Qingyun said.
In the eyes of industry insiders, the significance of Honor’s battery innovation has long gone beyond the improvement of the battery life of a single product. From the perspective of user experience evaluation, users may not often hear professional terms such as “dynamic deposition silicon-carbon anode”, but they can truly feel the reassurance of “remaining 20% to 30% power at 7 or 8 pm”. This kind of experience is a sense of trust that cannot be fully conveyed by parameter tables.
On a deeper level, the evolutionary journey of each unit of electricity is a microcosm of Honor’s in-depth integration of AI into R&D and manufacturing, as well as its systematic innovation. Recently, eight ministries and commissions including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued the Implementation Opinions on the “AI + Manufacturing” Special Action, pressing the “accelerator button” for the in-depth integration of AI technology into the manufacturing industry. In this context, Honor’s end-to-end practice has made its smart manufacturing factory a leading sample for observing the cultivation of new quality productive forces and the implementation of “AI + Manufacturing” in the manufacturing industry during the 15th Five-Year Plan period. It also confirms that Chinese technology enterprises are steadily advancing into the “deep waters” of basic materials and precision manufacturing from application innovation. This factory clearly reflects that the leap of global smart manufacturing across industry technical gaps and climbing to the top of the global value chain has become an irresistible surging tide.
