Unlimited power! For a brief moment in 2019, there was a smartphone with a whopping 18,000mAh battery — yes, that’s 3-4 times larger than today’s average phone battery. However, it failed to find an audience and its release was cancelled.
We are talking about the Energizer Power Max P18K Pop, which is a very descriptive name for a unique phone. The P18K should be self explanatory. “Pop” stands for the dual pop-up camera (it has a 16MP unit plus a 2MP depth sensor for face scanning).
The Energizer Power Max P18K Pop was a beast of a phone with its 18,000mAh battery
This phone was announced alongside the Energizer Ultimate U620S Pop, which was essentially the same phone, except with a very small 3,200mAh battery and just 10.3mm thick. Both were shown off at MWC in 2019 and we got to spend some time at the Energizer booth with this curious pair.
Energizer Power Max P18K pops up next to its battery-powered little brother, the Energizer Ultimate U620S Pop
The 18,000 mAh figure wasn’t chosen at random — it works out to less than the 100 watt-hours of electronics you can bring on planes. The phone definitely got the “Max” tag.
According to Energizer, the Power Max P18K Pop can play music 4 days in a row or play video 2 days in a row. There have been phones that have tried using efficient e-Ink screens to increase their stamina. Others had solar panels. P18K Pop took the brute force approach.
Once the battery runs out, it’s time to recharge. This task is handled by a USB-C port with support for USB Power Delivery 2.0 at 18W. It doesn’t sound like much, but you have to remember that this was before the 200+ watt charging craze.
Naturally, the P18K can also be used as a power bank to recharge other weak phones. It wasn’t that fast either, supporting only 2.5W output. Looking on the plus side, you can charge several other phones and still have enough power to last until the end of the day.
The price of all that power becomes apparent just by looking at the phone from the side. This is one of the hardest phones we’ve ever owned. According to the official spec sheet, it is 18mm thick, and its weight has remained a mystery.
In any case, many have called the P18K “a power bank that can take calls.” This is to sell the device for a while because it was a decent Android 9 (Pie) smartphone with Helio P70 chipset, 6GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage (plus a microSD slot).
It had a 6.2-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1,080 x 2,280 pixels on the front that was a rounded rectangle without notch. As we mentioned at the beginning, the front camera has lived on a pop-up module. For the rear, there was a 12 + 5 + 2 MP camera setup.
So, what happened to the Energizer Power Max P18K Pop? The manufacturer ran an IndieGoGo campaign as a form of pre-order. Fans can pick up the phone for $550, $150 off the estimated retail price. However, the funding goal was set at $1.2 million and there was insufficient interest in the device.
Maybe 18,000 mAh was too much – that much you have to carry around with you every day. Most people bring a power bank with them when they go out for a long day.
But you are probably one of the few people who can appreciate a phone with an insanely large battery. If you are, check out the Doogee V Max that was announced earlier this year — that phone has a 22,000mAh battery, FAA rules be damned!