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
A charging pad takes up way less space, costs way less, and is something you don’t have to plug into your phone.
Still, you could buy a whole bunch of nice MagSafe chargers for that kind of money. But what Swippitt offers is a tidier solution, one you don’t really have to think about.
I don’t really know how much mental labor I’m performing placing my phone on the nightstand every night.
Sounds super wasteful… It seems like the bigger the threat of climate change fucking up all of us the bigger the number of CEOs shooting shit into space and shitty “innovative” start-ups being founded
Wow, if only someone could find a way to miniaturize and “reimagine” this technology to put it in the phone itself…
Oh, right.
“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.
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.
I worked at Apple for a while and I can see a use case for this.
It was a little annoying to have to change your iPhone with the card reader attached (for taking payment and stuff in the shop floor) when it was out of battery. You would have to go upstairs and grab another one off charge, sign in, two factor, and then go downstairs to carry on. Only this one won’t pair with the card reader so you gotta do it again.
If you could just do this like the toaster then time saved would be a lot across a company.
I was thinking the same for a similar use case at my job that would nearly cut the number of phones we own in half, but we don’t need the stupid toaster to remove and replace the battery. I’m a goddamn cripple and can do that myself.
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
Mercur 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.
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.
Ok, its a battery charger. Why is it so big?
Because it is a battery CHANGER.
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.
Having to haul a trailer of some sort would be really annoying for long road trips because of the speed limits towing entails.
I’ve been road tripping around Europe a few times in my EV, and the car is always done charging before the kids are done on the toilet and we have restocked snacks/coffee/gotten an ice cream. Having a break for every ~2-3h of driving is also extremely nice I found, you arrive much less trashed. It’s actually only annoying when you stop to eat lunch/dinner, because you have to move the car before you’re done eating because it’s finished charging.
I’m in Australia, so my perspective may be skewed. The trailer would be optional, and I only mentioned it as the system as proposed could be just an extension of the self contained removable battery in a vehicle.
Unless batteries can become tremendously lighter, I see a standardised, swappable EV battery a given as a means to further increase vehicle efficiency. Why lug around hundreds of km of range when the distance between typical charging points is a fraction of that.
So you need to raid Battery Town and Gastown on your road trips while fighting off weirdos on the road? 😀
Most EVs can now do 200 plus miles on a full charge so I really don’t think range extenders are that necessary (especially when combined with level 3 fast charging). Plus where would you put it? The batteries on an EVs are stored on the undercarriage and they pretty much take up the entirety of the undercarriage, if there was extra space left over you would just put a permanent battery in there.
The batteries are what make EVs heavier compared to ICE vehicles, and the majority of trips don’t call for anything close to their peak range.
Installing a fraction of the capacity as a static battery would reduce weight for shorter trips, also extending the typical range.
Removable batteries could be installed in a standard cavity in the undercarriage, or in the regular cargo space, it just needs an electrical connection to the rest of the system.
Fast charging is also a problem, as it disproportionately affects the performance and longevity of the batteries. Swapping batteries would permit charging them at a more leisurely and manageable rate.
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.
Okay so you tell me what use case there is for an automated battery replacement system. As opposed to just doing it yourself which takes 20 seconds. Especially because when it inevitably breaks you’ll have to do it manually anyway.
All for the low low cost of a mid-range gaming laptop.
Well, their website pictures and targets only persons sitting at home with a dormant phone, and not some kind of other specialty use
It’d be cheaper to buy a power bank for every person in the house vs this abomination
Marketing =/= Reality!
2010s replaceable battery phones: look what they need to mimic fraction of our power.
fairphones have replaceable batteries and other parts
2010s?
Laughs in Nokia
At least with an external battery pack you don’t have to reboot your phone (which is a minor inconvenience, as a FP5 owner).
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 noon fit this company to sell you refills.
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?
I’m getting Juicero vibes
I especially love the sound! This thing is hilarious, can’t wait to read the disaster postmortem in a few years time.
Years? If this part of ever actually gets released it’ll last about 6 months before they stop production. It’s massively expensive and completely pointless.
Right? This is so stupid
