Lightning might be the connector of the future, and quite frankly it already seems absurd to me that I have to plug Apple’s huge old 30-pin dock connector into my little last-gen Nano just to charge it, but the oversized, hard-to-insert adapter will be hanging around for as long as people still have their perfectly good last-gen iDevices.
And Tylt’s Band Wall Charger looks to be a rather excellent charger for you luddites out there.
Prediction: A lot of East-Coasters are going to be getting solar panels and hand-cranked battery chargers this Christmas – what better stable-door/bolted-horse gift could there be?
So, if you are somehow optimistic enough to think that the sun will shine in New York in the winter, and pessimistic enough to think that global warming will send yet another squall of squirrelly weather this year, then the Switch 8 is for you.
Lightning chargers! Get your Lightning chargers here! Scosche has finally announced a set of basic home and car chargers for the current crop of iDevices, and you can actually buy the things.
It used to be so simple: you grabbed your gadget, and you plugged it into the nearest available USB hole. Then, a few minutes or hours later, your device was fully charged.
Now we have retina iPads with laptop-sized batteries, 5W, 10W and 12W chargers, and even differently-rated USB ports in our Macs. It’s so confusing.
Let’s make this problem disappear by throwing some money at it. $49 worth of cash-money, to be precise. And that $49 will get you the… DoubleUp!
I have no illusions about this retractable Lightning cable for charging your current-gen iOS devices – it looks so much like the crappy USB and 30-pin dock connector cables that come in those vending machine accessory kits that I wouldn’t be surprised if you could break the thing inside a few weeks, just by using it as it is meant to be used.
But it is just $10, and it is actually available to buy, which are two major points in its favor.
Just when you thought an iPhone or iPad dock had been built into every possible household object, here comes the iRocking Chair. In looks, it's a pretty traditional rocker, but it has some surprises built in. Not least is the fact that it can charge an iPad 3.
It used to be that we carried spare batteries for our devices. Then Apple sealed its products’ cases shut and some of us complained. Loudly. Then we realized that carrying an external battery pack meant we didn’t have to power-down to swap out batteries, and that we could now pick and choose the perfect third-party option, and we all shut the hell up.
Which is my long-winded way of introducing the new Zaggsparq packs, a range of three battery packs tailored perfectly to your iCharging needs. As long as you don’t own an iPad 3, that is.
Complaining about Apple gypping you by changing its terrible, bulky, hard-to-use 30-pin dock connector for the sleek, double-sided Lightning connector? Then take a look at the alternative from Samsung. One of the few things it didn't copy from Apple was the giant connector, but that's not to say it got anything right.
$9. Nine lousy dollars. With nine bucks, there’s no way you could make an iPhone stand this good, even buying parts from the cheapest of hardware stores. Hell, the only way to make a functional iPhone holder with $9 is to head to the bank, buy a roll of quarters and sit the iPhone up on top.
Which is hardly as elegant as this very practical-looking Pi Mount.
Wouldn’t it be cool if you could drop your iPhone or iPad on top of your speaker and have it charge as it pumps out the tunes? That’s the promise of TDK’s Wireless Charging Speaker, a product with a name about as self-evident as it gets.
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