The MIPI Alliance® announced a battery interface for mobile devices which improves consumer safety, battery performance, lessens the battery’s environmental impact. The robust, scalable and cost efficient 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, battery slave 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.