Lithium-ion battery charging chip

[tbinitbini]

I am making a handheld tracking unit that will use Lithium-Ion batteries. I need a battery charger chip. Are there any recommendations as far as companies that make good chips or a part number of the chip itself.
I am unfamiliar with lithium-ion batteries so I have not selected the batteries yet (how many cells and voltage levels)
I am using a 5V radio so that will be my max power requirement. That means I will need more than one cell.
My battery capacity will to be 850mAh to 1250mAh

I am looking at Dallas/Maxim chips. Is there a better supplier? So far maxim seems to have a lot of options.

So far I have looked at the Max745, Max1737 and the Max1531(can be charged via USB which is very interesting because I need to connect to a computer via USB). The Max745 requires some interaction by the microcontroller which is not the most desirable because I would prefer a smarter chip since I know little about battery charging. Cost is an issue, as always so if there is a significant price difference between smart and dumb chargers I might have to learn a lot more than I wanted to about chargers.


Also I am new to this site and I am a little confused at the difference between the Electrical/Electronic forum and the Circuit forum so if this question belongs in a different forum please tell me. I also have a question about microcontroller and which forum does that belong on?


TB

 

[felixc]

Take a look at Benchmarq (now a part of Texas Instruments), they pioneered this market.

 

[Fabioedl]

Microchip has some.