MIPI Alliance has announced a battery interface for mobile devices that improves consumer safety, battery performance and lessens the battery’s environmental impact. The single-wire communication interface is the first standard to address these key issues. Mobile device users can now look for smart batteries with longer lifetime, safe, environmentally-friendly battery chemistry as well as increased safety through temperature monitoring and decreased risk of counterfeit products. Plus, members of the mobile device ecosystem, OEMs, chipset suppliers, IC suppliers and battery pack manufacturers, will benefit from a commonly accepted battery interface that saves design and manufacturing complexity, reduces chipset space and improves cost margins.
According to industry analysts, the mobile device battery industry has expanded to at least 1.5 billion batteries produced per year. However, these batteries use many different, non-standard proprietary battery interfaces. This disparity has placed a significant burden on all members of the ecosystem. As advanced wireless networks including LTE and HSPA+ gain deployment, and smart phone functions require ever increasing processing power, the mobile device battery will become the weakest link in the mobile device. The MIPI battery interface specification will address many of these issues.
The MIPI Battery Interface specification addresses several key issues, including battery life, environmental concerns, high capacity chemistries and consumer safety. Popular smart phones are known to have shorter battery life as they churn through large amounts of data and always-on applications. MIPI’s specification includes unified access to parameters, state monitoring and optimized charging events that improve functionality within the battery, thereby lengthening its life. These capabilities also enable battery pack manufacturers to quickly implement and adopt environmentally-friendly and efficient chemistries for a “greener” battery.
Having multiple proprietary and competing battery interface solutions in the market lowers volumes for each product and consequently produces higher costs. This is true especially for smart batteries and likely has impacted their lagging adoption rate in the mobile device market despite the clear benefits of smart battery technology.
The MIPI Battery Interface specification has been developed to meet these challenges. Offering a unique, unified solution, the specification is designed to replace all existing proprietary mobile device battery interface solutions and supports both smart and low-cost batteries.
