In yet another entry in Android Community’s “why didn’t I think of that” series, accessory maker Dexim has a new product that should help you stay green and keep a watchful eye on your phone’s battery. The Visible Green USB charge and sync cable is a standard MicroUSB cable with a trick up its sleeve: it actively monitors your Android phone’s battery level. As the battery reaches its full capacity, the cord glows in a series of running lights, getting slower the longer it charges .When the battery id full, the lights switch off, letting you know that your phone’s ready.
This little trick is achieved by a string of LED lights built into the clear plastic section of the cable itself. As your phone charges, the alternating pattern simulates running lights, giving a colorful visual indication of the level of charge in your Android phone. Since LED lights use a tiny amount of electricity, the loss to the charge itself is negligible. Not only do the lights shut off once your battery is fully charged, the cable keeps an eye on the battery itself, periodically shutting down and starting up to preserve up to 85% of energy from a wall socket or computer.
The cable costs $15.90 on Dexim’s web store – not bad at all, considering that you’ll often spend $10-20 on a cheapo charger at a department store, and I once paid $40 for an emergency USB cable in the Las Vegas airport. The cable should work with any MicroUSB device and data transfers as well, though sadly the myriad charging ports on Android tablets will leave most of them out in the dust. For an example of the light action, observe the video below, running on inferior hardware from some obscure brand.
[via Lifehacker]
It’s not new.. See this on reddit earlier?
Yea but how can you market it as a “Green” product? The lighting up of the cord consumes un-needed energy to “let you know” when to unplug it to save energy
It costs more energy to actually light up the cord, so it’s has no purpose…