iPods will gain in battery life with new Wolfson audio chip

Class-D type amplifiers (as to be used in the new wolfson chip) have measurable weaknesses and are easily ABXed from good old AB-type amplifiers...

I hope wolfson doesn't mess up the sound quality.

I only get 5 seconds of battery life, I installed a SCSI. It's sweet while it lasts though man. ROCK ON!

Considering that this chip has a new codec, I don't think Apple can simply plop these chips into existing iPods.

Don't forget that Apple manufactures iPods, like the nano, without hard drives. (But they have smaller batteries!)

Any word on when these chips will appear in iPods? Will they go in the existing models or will we have to wait for a new generation?

I'm gonna have to agree. Replacing one tiny chip and leaving a big metal spinning drive isn't going to do much at all for playtime (not that I'm against platter drives). This is a good start though.

Uh, no, you didn't address what they said.

They said that replacing just this chip would not make a 70% difference because the rest of the device also consumes power.

You said that it wouldn't give a 70% improvement because when they go to use it they would also change other things that increase power consumption above and beyond current levels which would negate some or all of the gains of the new chip.

World of difference there.

You made no mention of the fact that if they didn't change anything else, you still wouldn't get anywhere near a 70% improvement in batter life.

Besides all that, the article says:
"to increase the power efficiency of digital media players by up to 70%". So, what does that mean? It sounds to me like it means that the whole player will have up to a 70% increase in efficiency. Math being what it is, a gain of that size would actually equate to a run time that is 3.3 TIMES the current level. Figure that it sucks down a 1000mah battery in 14 hours. If it's 70% more efficient, then in 14 hours it would have only consumed 300mah, leaving you with almost 33 more hours to go.

That means that it's even bigger news!! However, reporters being what they are, I'm guessing that they were wrong in translating what they were told into a final result of improving efficiency of the whole player by up to 70%.

Improved power consumption is all well and good. But will it enable the iPod to play OGG or FLAC formatted files?

The first issue with this is the fact that both iPods - i have the vid 30gb and 60gb don't even come close to the estimated battery life figures above...

I'm getting 3-4 hours on my 30gb and about an hour extra on my 60gb!

Chris and Michael:

Yes I agree with you both as well and addressed the fact that this chip alone will probably not help the battery life in the last paragraph:

"This type of statistic is rather unrealistic because each iPod upgrade means larger screens and a higher screen brightness and therefore a device that consumes more batteries."

The lcd screen's size and increased brightness couple with yes, a speedier hard drive, are actually the important factors for battery life.

cheers,
fbz

I agree with the above. The hard drive is almost certainly the biggest power consumer in the iPod, not the DSP.