Australian-made supercapacitors boost cellphone audio

Australia-based CAP-XX just announced its supercapacitor-based BriteSound power architecture for music phones. As MP3-ready handsets grow in popularity, consumers want a rich, iPod-quality audio experience without the buzzing and distortion caused by wireless transmissions.

In a BriteSound phone, a CAP-XX supercapacitor provides a boost in peak power (up to 5 watts) which can:

1) Double and sometimes triple audio power for richer-sounding music, and
2) Eliminate buzzing and distortion caused by wireless transmissions while listening to music.

BriteSound is the second CAP-XX BritePower architecture for mobile phones, joining the BriteFlash solution which uses a supercapacitor to achieve high-brightness LED flash in camera phones.

The company is working with key mobile-phone manufacturers and expects the first designs that are power-boosted by its supercapacitors to hit the market in 2008, according to CAP-XX CEO Anthony Kongats.

Supercapacitors offload peak-power demands from the battery to improve talk time, battery life, flash power and audio quality.

To demonstrate BriteSound, CAP-XX used three tests to compare audio quality and power in typical mobile-phone audio circuits, both with and without a supercapacitor.

In these tests, the supercapacitor:

1) Tripled peak audio power from 1.65 watts (W) to 5.2W during a 100Hz bass-beat test: http://www.cap-xx.com/news/photogallery.htm#Bass

2) Eliminated distortion during simultaneous peak-power demands to transmit data and respond to a network poll: http://www.cap-xx.com/news/photogallery.htm#Network

3) More than doubled peak audio power from 2.24W to 4.96W while playing a piece of music using a set of SonyEricsson MPS60 external speakers and audio amplifier: http://www.cap-xx.com/news/photogallery.htm#Listen



For more details:

BriteSound press release: http://www.cap-xx.com/news/BriteSoundPowerArchitecture.htm