(Interview) – Although the MobiBLU DAH-1500i is one of the better products we’ve seen at such a minute size, battery life span was one of the main drawbacks we noted in our initial review. With flash players from Samsung (and others) pulling in 40-50 hours of battery life, we felt 10 hours to be fairly limited, but after discussing the issue with MobiBLU, here’s what the company had to say in its defense:

"If you were to open up a Cube you would see some amazing engineering work.  There is no MP3 player on the market with the features that we have in a form factor of this size.  You would also see that there is absolutely no extra room for additional things like a larger battery." MobiBLU continues, "We have the highest density rechargeable battery currently available than can physically fit inside the Cube form factor. We have the smallest, lowest power processor that meets our feature requirements." The explanations are justified thus far.

"Battery life is a factor of battery density and processing power requirements.  As stated above, we already have the state of the art in both cases, so the battery life "is what it is" due to this factor and the 8-10 battery life is not due to our product design or engineering or any other reason, including saving cost. As soon as the battery industry can supply higher density batteries in the form factor required and as soon as the semiconductor suppliers can provide lower power processors that meet our demands, we will be at the head of the line to use those products in the
future."

MobiBLU further pointed out the power saving functionality of the DAH-1500i, which turns off the OLED screen to conserve battery life (competitive players does that as well). And as you might also know, the battery life depends on the audio encoding rate (bit-rate) as well. If you were listening to music at the highest encoding rate, the battery life would be used much more than if you are were using audio files encoded at lower bit-rates.

There you have it, an explicit response from MobiBLU itself.