This is awesome! For only $450 you can get a machine that can automatically swap battery packs placed on bulky $120 phone cases.
You don’t need to plug a cable in your phone anymore, your over engineered machine can swap battery packs for you
I never imagined that I would live this long to see the future
Wow, if only someone could find a way to miniaturize and “reimagine” this technology to put it in the phone itself…
Oh, right.
Why do so many western start ups come up with ways to make something simple complicated? This gives me lots of juicero vibes.
I mean a phone case with a removable battery? Yeah that’s cool. Already been done though … a very long time ago.
https://www.wired.com/2011/05/third-rail-case-adds-removable-battery-to-iphone/
But I don’t need a machine to take out the battery and replace it. It’s just something else to take up room on my nightstand and eventually break. I’d bet they somehow figure out a way to make it a subscription service too.
Yeah I had one of those charger cases for my S7
Juicero was an attempt at replicating the printer (or Razor and blades) model for juice, that’s why.
They failed to consider that you can’t squeeze blades. Maybe they should’ve added some to their bags as juice DRM
Merkur 23C, btw, in case anyone is looking for a safety razor that’s both inexpensive and very good. Unchanged for literally a century now, no fancy materials (“aerospace-grade aluminium”) but good ole chromed zinc and brass. On the blade side, Russians being out of the picture, BIC is probably the right choice unlike other western brands they didn’t slouch on quality. Feather is always an option but many consider them too sharp. Also, more expensive. BICs should be somewhere around 15ct a piece. Don’t buy anything of that stuff from Wilkinson or such their offerings in that area seem to only exist to make safety razors look bad.
“There’s no AI of dubious value”
The whole thing is of little to no value. Maybe a good idea for people with physical limitations like bad arthritis where swapping a battery might be difficult, but for the average person it’s tech vaporware waiting to fail.
At which point even the ones who it does help will no longer be able to use it because it probably depends on an online connection for no good reason.
Didn’t even think of that, but true. The device would only work as long as a service provider is willing to support it. Or your subscription runs out.
I worked as a consultant at a product development firm. One of our clients had us making a kitchen appliance that would take a “pod” of some kind (like Keurig).
Their little ad video that they made before involving us had a little CG video showing the pod floating into the receiver and sliding down into the machine.
When we showed them the prototype, the first question we got is if the pod receiver thing was motorized.
Like…no. You push it down. Takes 1 second.
Anyway replacing a phone battery does not need to be automated.
This doesn’t even replace the phone battery, it changes an external charging case.
We have these in bars etc, they let you rent a charged power bank. This is just that with added complexity.
Pretty sure it’s not changing out the whole case. Besides why would you do that? Plus there’s a pic of the case with a slot on the side the battery slides in and out of.
I’m getting Juicero vibes
Right? This is so stupid
I don’t see the use case for phones, and maybe there is for other personal electronics, but something similar for EVs should become the norm.
Basically a range extender when you need it, but it can be removed to save on weight when your trips are within the built-in battery’s range. Such a system could easily be extended to trailers, including their own static or removable batteries, and where the additional axles could be powered so they can contribute regenerative braking.
Coming Soon: A subscription model where you pay $10 a month for the ability to use your $450 battery swapper.
And you need a special mandatory app on the phone to use it. It needs all permissions and tracks you. It downloads audio ads and uploads them to the swapper while swapping, so it can play them while you sleep.
App Update: Fitness tracker permissions can now tell when you are sleeping, so the app only plays ads when you are awake and actively looking at your device.
So… you’re essentially carrying around a power bank on the back of your phone all the time? Seems like a gimmick at best.
Honestly, fast charging has turned this into such a non-issue that you’ll be hard pressed to find a more convenient solution.
The fuck? Use a battery pack…
This issue has been solved for years.
I’m always shocked by how unimaginative this tech-centric community acts. OK, so this version is silly for YOU. Are you the whole world? Are you the future? Stuff like this is typically a bulky demo unit in need of further development. Fringe case devices are also that - fringe case solutions. This isn’t for the person sitting at home with a dormant phone. This probably has an application in medical and scientific fields where mobility is critical, staying in one device is necessary, avoiding a tangled external battery pack is preferred, and automation prevent human error like not plugging in the dead pack fully kor at all). Could have larger applications for swapping vehicle batteries, as well.
So don’t buy it.
Well, their website pictures and targets only persons sitting at home with a dormant phone, and not some kind of other specialty use
And those weird products that make common, simple tasks easier (think: 90s-00s infomercial for like jar openers or soda pourers) only ever showed normal, able-bodied people badly performing tasks. Doesn’t change the fact that those were targeted at people with disabilities without singling them out. The shown user is not always the target audience.
It’d be cheaper to buy a power bank for every person in the house vs this abomination
Marketing =/= Reality!
I thought the thing will lower your phone into the box so that the battery doesn’t take your whole room with it when it eventually explodes during charging…
That’s what my thought was, and that would be way cooler.
How does this make any sense when buying 2 of the cases is half the price while also faster and easier to swap? It would maybe make sense if it swapped out the actual phone battery. Maybe that’s their end goal, but how does it make sense at all to sell this as a real product?
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Aren’t battery packs really bad for your phone tho? Keeping it at 100% constantly until it runs out
The article says the app can be used to limit your charging to 80%.
Still pretty batshit. Swapping external batteries yourself would be too hard?
They would get lost for sure if they left the toaster. You must not have kids. Which i suppose would be a boon for this company to sell you refills.
