So after what, 4 years of development?, only at the 11th hour are they spinning a new chip that is suitable for high drain devices? 
What was all their claims about 1.5A output capability then if they had never really tested it properly?
The odds of this thing being decently efficient over the whole performance envelope in the size available has to be very low.
What are the odds of something going wrong with the new IC?
How can they test and qualify a new IC, presumably make PCB changes as well?, ramp up production, and get these things shipped in a month?
...
So why not make it efficient at 1.5A in the first place?
Seems like a last minute snafu.
I don't think that they've ever really tested much of anything, otherwise they would probably have been able to show some kind of specifications rather than the vague moving targets we've seen. I believe they're still trying to engineer something that will actually work well enough to fool at least some people but that the few bits of description and things like 1.5A current capability are more of a design
goal than any sort of measurement or specification of the finished product.
And can you just make it magically better without compromising efficiency at the lower end?
This is the sort of basic stuff you are supposed figure out in the initial prototype stage before you go public with the song and dance routine.
I'm just speculating now but one theory I have is that their real product is not the batteriser but the IC.
Physical size is also a problem. There isn't much real estate on top of a AAA battery. Existing ICs and inductors capable of generating 1.5A at 1.5MHz with 80-90% efficiency throughout the range are much larger and wouldn't fit. Switching to ICs running at 3MHz may help some.
Designing even simple things takes a lot of time so making your own asic/chip/whatever like they say to do (did they just select another on the shelf DC2DC chip in fact?) take even more time especially because it NEVER work on the first time, and they don't says that their chip has been tested. Just "receiving the final" IC so that an engineering sample, they would need much more round of test before the chip is "final" (and a chip is never final anyway, look at all the errata sheet on nearly all components)
My assumption has always been that they aren't really designing their own IC from scratch but rather just a customized version of an existing off-the-shelf DC-DC converter chip. My guess would be a standard part that has been modified to run at a slightly higher frequency (could be as simple as a resistor or cap change on the die) and perhaps includes a beefier output MOSFET or whatever. Oh, and
of course custom part number silkscreened on top. (Perhaps ONLY that!)
I seriously doubt they have actually designed a breakthrough, fundamentally different DC-DC converter topology or novel circuit design of any kind. I fully expect the first person that shaves open one of their chips will find it to be identical to or (perhaps a mildly tweaked version of a commercially available chip from one of the major manufacturers.
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