Tech companies race to make cellphones more energy-efficient
Demands of devices driving research into power management
10:07 PM CDT on Friday, March 21, 2008
By VICTOR GODINEZ / The Dallas Morning News
Behind every great new portable gadget is a battery struggling to keep up.
The humble lithium ion battery has fallen behind as:
•Cellphones have sprouted color screens, then cameras, Web browsers and GPS trackers.
•MP3 players have transformed into touch-screen video players.
•Laptops have adopted Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Blu-ray.
Battery companies have been able to increase the energy density of their lithium ion batteries about 10 percent per year in the last several years, but the growing energy demands of portable devices have outpaced those gains.
Work is booming for tech companies designing integrated circuits to make cellphones and other handheld gadgets more energy-efficient.
The growth in the power management industry was highlighted Monday, when Analog Devices Inc. officially opened its power management research center in Richardson.
The company has only a handful of engineers now, but it expects to hire more.
Analog Devices isn't the only company in the Dallas area working on portable power management technology.
Dallas-based Texas Instruments Inc. is generally considered the leading firm in that realm, while start-ups such as P{+2} Technologies LP (formerly PowerPulse Technologies) in Richardson are working on their own solutions to the problem of portable power.
"There are a number of people who weren't previously in the business, who say, 'There's good money here,' " said Stephan Ohr, research director for analog semiconductors at research firm Gartner Inc.
Gartner predicted in 2006 that sales of power management hardware for portable devices would grow to more than $3.4 billion in 2010 from about $814 million in 2005.
Mr. Ohr said the $3.4 billion estimate might be too high, since so many new manufacturers are jumping into the market and driving prices down.
Analog Devices is one of those entrants.
Peter Henry, vice president of power management products for Analog Devices, joined the Massachusetts-based firm in 2006 to jump-start that division.
He was in town for the official ribbon-cutting at the research facility, one of several that Analog Devices now has around the globe.
Mr. Henry said power management has become a bigger concern for makers of cellphones and other portable devices over the last few years, as more features have been crammed in.
"If you look back to 2001, nobody had a problem with battery life" on cellphones, he said. "But it was a basic voice-only handset."
Now consumers expect their phones to be essentially pocket computers, sending and receiving e-mail, connecting to wireless Internet networks and playing back almost any digital media.
Oh, and it has to make phone calls.
As a result, keeping a phone operational for an entire workday on a single charge is becoming a challenge, Mr. Henry said.
Engineers at the Richardson facility and elsewhere will be working on devices that, for example, will limit the power required by the lenses on the coming generation of high-resolution cameras on cellphones.
The company is also working on technology to address a common problem where a phone powers down prematurely, even though the battery still has as much as a 25 percent charge.
Mr. Henry says his firm can extend the battery life in phones and other gadgets by as much as four times.
While Analog Devices is getting its feet wet in power management, Texas Instruments is continuing development in a field it has been involved in since the beginning of the decade.
"In the last three and four years, it's really been a hot topic," said Douglas Phillips, marketing manager for power management at TI.
TI declined to name specific products using its technology, but Mr. Ohr reported in 2006 that the BlackBerry 8700, the Motorola V3 Razr phones and other devices use TI integrated circuits.
Lengthening the battery life of a BlackBerry or other handheld device is achieved by using several – in some cases, dozens – of voltage regulators to efficiently direct the electricity stored on the lithium ion batteries.
While some battery manufacturers, such as Toshiba, have proposed long-lasting fuel-cell batteries, TI and Analog Devices expect to be wrestling with lithium ion batteries for several years.
"Lithium ion batteries are going to be the core technology for a while," Mr. Phillips said.
There's no magic bullet yet for power management in portable devices.
But Mr. Phillips said the technologies TI, Analog Devices and others are creating should let device makers continue adding features, such as television on your phone.
"I don't think power management is a roadblock to anything," he said. "I think we're well within pace of what anyone wants to do." |
