We all know that battery life is one of the biggest issues we run into with our mobile devices. Whenever you are away from a wall socket, it’s a constant struggle to conserve battery life. You can buy spare battery packs, but those have drawbacks as well: they can be big and bulky; and, they also run out of battery life. Well, now a Kickstarter project is claiming to solve some of these issues. Ampy is a battery pack that you wear when your out and about. So as long as you are wearing/carrying the pack, kinetic energy charges the battery. This allows you to have a constant, renewable source of energy for all of your smart devices.
The Ampy battery pack is only a 1000 mAh which is pretty small for an external battery pack and it’s pretty chunky to wear around all day. But, it does constantly recharge so you won’t need to search for a wall socket to top the battery pack off. Ampy’s co-founder Tejas Shastry claimed, “A typical day of walking for a city dweller (10,000 steps) can give you up to 3 hours of battery life for your smartphone.” That’s not too shabby for such a small battery pack.
We’ve all heard Kickstarter horror stories, but this project is different than most. For one thing, the project has already met and beat it’s funding goal by a healthy margin. Also, the company gave themselves plenty of time to perfect their product. They wont be shipping until at least June 2015 so Ampy should have plenty of time to work out the kinks in their product. The biggest comfort might be the fact that Ampy has been “Dragon Certified.” This means that the hardware crowdfunding platform, Dragon Innovation, has had engineers go over the project to make sure that it is viable.
No matter how judicious you are with the use of your devices, they are always going to run out of battery life. This is just a fact of life. It pays to have a back up plan and the Ampy could be just that. This battery pack could be great during regular workdays or in emergencies. I don’t know about you guys, but this is a project I’m going to keep an eye on. If you want to help fund the project head over to Kickstarter, there are 9 days to go in the campaign.
Source Kickstarter via TechCrunch