Energizer’s brick of a smartphone uses “world’s most powerful” phone battery

Enlarge / The Energizer Power Max P18K Pop. Too thick? (credit: GSMArena)

Mobile World Congress has been home to some truly unique smartphone designs this year, and one of the strangest has to be the Energizer PowerMax P18K Pop, an attention-grabbing brick of a smartphone with an 18,000mAh battery.

I know what you're going to ask: "Wait, Energizer makes phones?" Yes, this is something like the 45th announced Energizer phone. Energizer Holdings licenses its brand to Avenir Telecom for mobile phones, and this French company has been using the brand to pump out generic-looking feature phones and smartphones since 2016.

The Energizer Mobile page is here, but it does not acknowledge the existence of the P18K anywhere. The only official info we have to go on is a BusinessWire press release with a single (comically misleading) picture. I think some skepticism of Energizer Mobile is warranted since last year at Mobile World Congress when the company showed off the Power Max P16K Pro, a phone with a 16,000mAh battery. The company gave it a launch date of September 2018 and a $738 price tag, but it never made it to market and, according to GSMArena, has been cancelled. Avenir also brought what looks to be a plastic mockup of a foldable 5G phone to MWC, which doesn't seem to have a high chance of actually hitting the market.

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments