Apple could switch to in-house power management chip for iPhone in two years

Apple is reportedly designing a custom power management chip to drive an iPhone battery in an effort to help increase performance of iOS devices while keeping power consumption low.

Current and older iPhone, iPad and iPod touch models rely on a single-chip solution supplied by German company Dialog Power Management. Dialog’s solution is thought to decrease the power consumption of a mobile device by up to thirty percent.

But as Nikkei Asian Review said today, that could change within the next two years as Apple is said to adopt a custom-designed chip to control an iPhone’s battery.

“Based on Apple’s current plan, they are set to replace partially, or around half of its power management chips to go into iPhones by itself starting next year,” a source told Nikkei.

This jives well with a report from analyst Karsten Iltgen who said there was “strong evidence” Apple was working on bespoke power-management integrated circuits. The rumored Apple-designed solution should replace Dialog’s chip “at least in part,” said the analyst.

“We hear from the industry that about 80 engineers at Apple are already working on a power-management integrated circuit with specific plans to employ it in the iPhone by as early as 2019,” according to Iltgen’s research note released back in March.

Apple already designs a bunch of chips in-house, including the main A-series processors that power iOS devices as well as chips that drive Touch ID, Face ID and other functions. The company is also said to be working on replacing Intel and Qualcomm modems in iPhones with its custom baseband chip that could be integrated into the main A-series silicon.

Image top of post courtesy of iFixit