OnePlus Ace launching next week with super fast 150W charging

Not long after introducing a phone capable of 80W wired charging, OnePlus may be at again with a new handset that practically doubles that already blazing charging speed. But the improvement may not matter to U.S. phone shoppers for a couple different reasons.

OnePlus has already confirmed that it plans to launch the OnePlus 10R in India on April 28. Via a tease of the OnePlus 10R launch on Twitter, the phone maker says its new device will feature the same 80W SuperVooc fast charging feature that debuted in the OnePlus 10 Pro. But the OnePlus 10R will also feature a version that uses 150W SuperVooc charging.

The 80W charging is already pretty fast. According to OnePlus, its new flagship can get to a 61% charge after 15 minutes using the 80W speed. Reportedly, the 150W charging technology can completely charge a phone in that same time.

Before the OnePlus 10R arrives in India, OnePlus plans to introduce another phone. According to social media posts on Weibo and a listing on the company's website in China, this will be the OnePlus Ace. And based on photos, it's a dead ringer for the OnePlus 10R, suggesting that it's the same phone, only branded with a new name. Those fast-charging features will still be in place, though.

Here's where it gets challenging for OnePlus fans depending on where they are in the world. The OnePlus Ace appears to be only launching in China. While OnePlus has debuted phones in its home market before only to introduce them to other countries — the OnePlus 10 Pro arrived in January months ago before its arrival this week in the rest of the world — it's unclear if the phone maker has similar plans for the OnePlus Ace.

Then again, it's not as if OnePlus is going to develop a new technology and then limit it to select regions. Even if the OnePlus 10R and OnePlus Ace never leave their respective markets, that 150W SuperVooc charging technology is likely to appear in other devices, whether OnePlus resumes releasing a T series of its current flagship in the fall or that boost to charging is added to the next OnePlus flagship to arrive, presumably in 2023.

For U.S. users, though, there's an additional catch. The OnePlus 10 Pro may charge at 80W wired in the rest of the world, but the technology isn't compatible with 110-120V outlets found in North America. As a result, the new flagship phone is limited to 65W charging.

That doesn't make much of a difference in getting the OnePlus 10 Pro to a full charge. In our testing, the OnePlus 10 Pro got to a 55% charge after 15 minutes, only a few percentage points behind with OnePlus says is possible with an 80W charging speed. So U.S. users are already enjoying pretty fast recharge speeds with OnePlus phones, even if the new 150 SuperVooc technology promises to speed things up further in other parts of the globe.

Up until now charging speed has been a big differentiating factor between flagship phones — nobody wants to sit around waiting to top off their smartphone's battery. But we may be reaching the point of diminishing returns on this feature, especially if its full benefits aren't available to a pretty well-populated part of the globe.