This smartphone is basically a battery with a screen

Smartphones have a very obvious Achilles Heel: the battery life. While handset battery is hardly as fatal as the heel was to Achilles (Galaxy Note 7 aside), it’s nonetheless a touch dispiriting that in terms of stamina, our phones today are demonstrably weaker than the mobiles of the late 1990s.

The truth is you can have great battery life or slim design. You can’t have both, and nearly every manufacturer on the planet has plumped for the latter. Still, there are always exceptions, and should you value battery over everything else, then you should consider Chinese outfit Oukitel. Its upcoming K10000 Pro promises a whopping 10,000mAh battery.

Let’s put that in perspective – what does 10,000mAh look like? Well, the iPhone 7 has a 1,960mAh battery. The Samsung Galaxy S8’s is 3,000mAh. Phablets tend to have a bit more, but they still max out around the 3,600mAh mark. Lenovo’s P2 is a bit of an anomaly with a 5,000mAh battery, but even that is half the size of the K10000, which promises 10-15 days of “normal usage”. Of course, your definition of “normal usage” will likely vary greatly from theirs, but you’re still looking at several days – and the bundled fast charger should top it up from flat to full in three and a half hours. Impressive.

Of course, there’s a downside to every handset, and in the case of the Oukitel K10000, it’s pretty much everything else. First off, it’s a bit bulky, reportedly tipping the scales at 292.5 grams – that more than the weight of two iPhone 7s crudely welded together. Specs-wise it’s unlikely to be all that either. The Verge is reporting that its 5.5in 1080p display will be powered by an octa core 1.5Ghz MediaTek processor backed by 3GB RAM and 32GB storage.

Still, it is an improvement on what Oukitel currently offers. The K10000 Pro is a follow up to the $240 (~£185) K10000, a similarly big-batteried handset which the iffily translated Oukitel website promises will “break the Guinness”. Whether or not the new model damages any dry stouts, it’ll certainly be an improvement on the original, which only had a 720p screen, a 1GHz processor, 2GB RAM and 16GB of storage. But plenty of battery life in which to enjoy them in, at least.