If you change smartphones every year or every time a new shinier thing come along (and if you don’t sell or give away your old phones), you probably have a lot of still functioning products lying around your house. A new Kickstarter project wants your batteries to not go to waste and in fact, be of use to you and your current smartphone. The Better Re will turn those old batteries into power banks that will give extra power, especially when you travel.
This “upcycling power pack” is a case that will house cellphone batteries of up to 58.5 x 97.8 x 6.5mm (reportedly the largest battery in the market) and turn them into expansion packs or power banks. How much power you can get out of it depends on how old it is and how much power it used to give your old smartphone, and also, what rate your current one charges at as well as how often you use it. The output is 5 V and 2 A, so if your battery is still in good working condition, it will be able to charge a Galaxy S6 in 76 minutes and a Galaxy Note 4 in 96 minutes.
If you don’t happen to have any old batteries lying around, you just need to add a little more to your pledge and you’ll also get a recycled phone battery together with the power pack. Later on, they also have plans to make batteries of their own, hopefully from recycled materials as well.
The Kickstarter campaign hasn’t yet reached its $50,000 goal, but it’s getting there and there are still 27 days to go. If you have an extra battery at home, you only need to pledge $39 and you just need to add $10 more to get a used smartphone battery. Estimated delivery date is November his year.
SOURCE: Kickstarter
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Am I the only one thinking that is an absurdly large device for such a small capacity? From my estimate, my own power bank is about twice the size and hold 16000mah of battery capacity. Yes, real capacity, not faked ultrafire capacity. Since I bought the battery from reputable seller selling Samsung and Panasonic 18650 cells.
Why would having a lot of battery with questionable reliability be a good idea? Just give your old cellphone’s battery to whoever is using your old phone now. Be it your family cheapskate or your new craigslist friend eager to pay you 200 to get a taste of smart phone’s power.
To add insult to injury…
I paid about 6 USD for each Panasonic NCR18650B cells, about 4 to 5 for Samsung high capacity/higher voltage (4.35V) cells.
You get less capacity, less reliability, yet paid more for the recycle cells… What???