There’s no shortage of power cases and external battery packs to keep your iPhone battery topped-up during a long day of heavy use, and we’ve reviewed a number of cases and external batteries.
But power cases add bulk, and battery packs are just one more thing to carry. So the company behind the Nifty MiniDrive thought why not embed the battery in something you have on you anyway – your belt.
The XOO Belt is a simple solution to an everyday problem: smartphone battery life. No new gadget to lug around but something we wear everyday anyway, redesigned with the help of some clever new technology.
It looks, feels and weighs about the same as a really nice belt… but comes with a mighty 2,100mAh of hidden charge and can charge pretty much any device.
While some of the battery power is housed inside the admittedly rather chunky buckle (DO NOT wear to Thanksgiving dinner), the XOO uses flexible batteries to tuck most of it inside the belt itself.
A micro-USB cable sits tucked into the belt, allowing you to pull it out and use with a Lightning adapter to charge your iPhone while it’s in your pocket. Nifty says the capacity is more than sufficient to fully recharge an iPhone 6 battery.
The convenience comes at a price, though: the XOO Belt is available as an Indiegogo project for a rather steep $155, and you’ll need to add the cost of a Lightning adapter to that. That makes it an absurdly pricy competition for the low-cost battery packs out there.
The project has already raised $28k of its $50k goal in the first 24 hours, so it seems guaranteed to be funded.
Via TNW
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Nice until it catches fire and you’re trying to get out of the dang thing1
Sounds like a viral Vine video in the making to me …
Hello, Sam here from Nifty (the guys behind the XOO Belt).
We’re using a really interesting new type of non-volatile battery: lithium ceramic polymer as opposed to explode-y lithium ion. No flammable liquid, ultra safe flexible material.
Here’s a video of our engineer / co-founder poking, prodding and cutting them up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYf_XYO80ew
Would it look like genitals dangling when the phone is plugged in and hanging? Or do we take the belt off and hold up our pants? Or do we have a cable going from the belt to our pocket? In which case, does that look like a catheter or colostomy tube? It’d almost be less obvious if it were attached to our nipples or butt holes. no?
I….. Need….. This……..
I prefer to mule my lithium ion packs like so many cocaine-filled condoms.
It seems like the kind of battery that should be used in the band of the apple watch. The contact points would be in the mechanism the latches the band to the watch while the batteries are housed in the band. There’s your all day/week battery life. I should’ve patented that – actually I think that was a patent I saw in one of Ben’s post showing a apple patent with flexible batteries? Maybe 8 or so months ago? These batteries being LiPo vs Li ion pack a bigger punch too. We use them in our RC airplanes but with the ceramic polymer should be much safer.
How tacky, you can cram a battery into any article of clothing doesnt mean you should. No one who wears belts daily will buy a techie belt, they want a belt that looks good with the clothes they are wearing. Lets put them into shoe soles, neck ties, and shirt collars while we are at it.
Instead of Apple’s pursuit of thinness I’d much rather they added a few mm. to the phone and fit a decend 24/48 hour battery.
I can just see a variation of this being available for the Apple Watch, with a per manent wire connection to the watch !