Filed under: Audio, Hardware, iPod Family
iPods will gain in battery life with new Wolfson audio chip
Wolfson Microelectronics, the company behind audio chips found in almost every iPod model, is unveiling a low power masterpiece, the WM8985. The new chip will give up to 70
percent more listening time according to Wolfson. This means if your current iPod can play music for 14 hours (a statistic for a typical 5G iPod), with the new Wolfson
chip and a similar battery the same iPod would be able to play for 23.8 hours.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. A 70 percent increase in battery life for this single chip is, however, quite a leap (most gains in chip power consumption are in the 20 to 30 percent range). It will be interesting to see if the WM8985 chip stays at a price point favorable to Apple with this new release.
[via Macworld UK]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jason said 8:31PM on 1-16-2006
Not only that, but the chip isn't the only power draw in the iPod. The disk and the screen both draw quite a bit of power.
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Michael Kalus said 8:58PM on 1-16-2006
Little bit of a misthinking here. The new playtime would be accurate if the chip would be the only thing already drawing power from the battery.
I would wager a guess, but the chip is probably one of the more energy efficent pieces in the iPod already.
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Chris Dolan said 12:30AM on 1-17-2006
I agree with the above. The hard drive is almost certainly the biggest power consumer in the iPod, not the DSP.
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Fabienne Serriere said 5:15AM on 1-17-2006
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
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Ewout van Bekkum said 6:50AM on 1-17-2006
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!
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George Fenugrade said 9:33AM on 1-17-2006
Improved power consumption is all well and good. But will it enable the iPod to play OGG or FLAC formatted files?
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GunGeek said 10:11AM on 1-17-2006
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%.
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Nucleocide said 11:44AM on 1-17-2006
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.
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Marc Arendt said 3:02PM on 1-17-2006
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?
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Marc said 3:07PM on 1-17-2006
Considering that this chip has a new codec, I don't think Apple can simply plop these chips into existing iPods.
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d00fy said 9:21PM on 1-17-2006
I only get 5 seconds of battery life, I installed a SCSI. It's sweet while it lasts though man. ROCK ON!
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Stefan Keller said 1:49AM on 1-18-2006
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.
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