Huawei claims it has made a phone battery that can reach a 48% charge level in five minutes. It’s a 3000mAh battery, which should be enough for many smartphones.

The downside is that the battery requires a separate, relatively bulky charger that looks to be about the size of the packaging that a smartphone comes in when new.

A second battery using the same technology can reach 68% capacity in two minutes, though at only 600mAh, it’s nowhere close enough to be viable for a smartphone.

Huawei isn’t saying much about how the technology works other than that it “bonded heteroatoms to the molecule of graphite in [the] anode, which could be a catalyst for the capture and transmission of lithium through carbon bonds.”

Heteroatoms is simple a term that means an atom that isn’t made up of a ring of carbon or hydrogen and covers substances as diverse as nitrogen, phosphorus and iodine.

There’s no word yet on when (if ever) the battery will go on sale. If nothing else, it may be a case of waiting until the charger can be reduced to a more manageable size.