News - TI's new battery charger IC to cut charge times in half

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It is also more efficient and cooler running.

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http://hexus.net/media/uploaded/2013...e5e861c56f.jpgSTOP... Texas Instruments.

Hilarious photo aside, this is great stuff. People often forget about power delivery and charging when it comes to system efficiency.

I think this could be very welcome if added to new smartphones. The quicker you can get to a full charge the better.

I haven't had issues with charge times on my phone, just discharge times! Plugging in overnight or on my desk at work rather than in my pocket isn't exactly a hardship.

Though I guess wireless charging may change mindsets on this, it would be really convenient to just pop a phone on a table for 5 minutes to charge it up fully. Wireless charging on trains or buses, just pop your phone into a slot on the back of the seat in front.

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Originally Posted by jimbouk

I haven't had issues with charge times on my phone, just discharge times! Plugging in overnight or on my desk at work rather than in my pocket isn't exactly a hardship.

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Same here. If my battery lasts all day then so long as it charges up in less than 6 hours overnight I'm not bothered. I'd rather it was efficient, preserves battery longevity etc but I guess ICs like this enable larger batteries like tablets to still charge in acceptable time.

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Originally Posted by Steve

STOP... Texas Instruments.

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I was at the Tory Party Conference a couple of years, around the time BoJo was running for London mayor, and there were a lot of "Back Boris" campaign materials everywhere. It was very hard to resist adding the obvious missing comma... ;)

tbh, until we get higher capacity batteries that would otherwise take too long to charge, this is fairly uninspiring. The charge time isn't the problem with my smartphone: the discharge time is. Until that's sorted, halving the already short charging time of my phone isn't going to revolutionise my life...

Yes I agree that batteries need to last longer, but improvments like this are always welcome. The majority of time I charge my phone when I'm in bed, so it doesn't really matter how long it takes. However there are always times that I can't do that, when I'm travelling for example and there isn't a socket near the bed. So to be able to get more power out a 10-15 minute charge when I'm in the shower would be a great benefit. Or that 20 minutes you need to give your phone a boost before going on a night out etc.

I don't see this as a killer improvement, but a really nice thing that will make the multitudes of gadgets out there more pleasant to work with.

Hope that apple use/improve this charging upgrade. my iPad really takes a long time to get fully charge.

Hmm, my 4200Mah extended battery takes a while to charge from near flat to full. I have actually ran into instances where this would be useful. For instance, multi-day trips with limited opportunity to charge. Or perhaps, I have limited number of sockets available at the place I am staying but need to charge a number of devices/batteries. Since I do not want to wake up in the middle of the night, I want to have at least one or two devices fully charged by the time I go to bed, so that I can switch out and charge the "main" device. Sometime it's possible, but sometime I just have to unplug before it's fully charged (or stay up). It's not something I need every day, but it can be useful.