Cell Phone Battery Charger
client: Advanced Charging Technologies

ACT developed an industrial product for recharging cellular phone batteries very quickly. They wanted to make this technology accessible to the public, so they sought Ratio's help to convert the industrial charger into their first consumer electronics product: a rapid charger that works with a variety of cell phone batteries.

The project was fairly straightforward, except for one thing: the tiny charging component generates a huge amount of heat. Ratio's development team solved this problem by designing the entire product around an aluminum base. The aluminum acts as a heat sink, drawing heat away from the charger.  (more )

Battery Charger (continued)

The main technical advantage of this revolutionary charger is the highly efficient synchronous power supply, which is 95% efficient (compared to 75% efficiency in most other power supplies.) This reduces greatly the amount of energy lost to heat.

The product consists of three main pieces: the base, the body, and the battery holder with the charger connectors. With Ratio's design, ACT can use the same unit to charge different batteries by replacing one single part-the battery holder. The initial product is designed to charge specific batteries from Motorola, Nokia, and Ericsson. (more )

Battery Charger (continued)

Unlike other chargers, ACT's product uses a unique technology to charge three totally different types of batteries: NiCAD (nickel cadmium), NiMH (nickel metal hydride), and lithium ion. The unit can charge a lithium ion battery faster than any competitive product. The charger also reverses the effects of memory build-up in NiCAD batteries, and lengthens life expectancy for each battery to approximately 300 charges.

After making some slight revisions to the working models Ratio developed, ACT plans to release the product during the first quarter of 2000.  (beginning of article)