chargers - page 3

The best iPhone accessories

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iPhone accessories
Accessories can make your iPhone easier to use.
Photo: Twelve South

The iPhone comes in such a simple form that you could think of it as the core brain of a larger system. If you need to go underwater, you can get a case for that. If you want to turn it into a satnav for your bike or stroller, you can do that, too (see below).

The iPhone accessory market is huge, and there is a gadget or gizmo for almost anything. Here are some of our favorite iPhone accessories, for the new iPhone X as well as for older iPhones.

Apple’s ‘fast’ iPhone 8 charger isn’t as quick as you think

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charger
The MacBook's USB-C charger won't charge your iPhone much faster.
Photo: Maurizio Pesce/Flickr CC

The iPhones 8 and X both support Apple’s “fast-charging” option, which has been available on the iPad Pro since the first 13-inch model. Fast charging lets you use a powerful USB-C charger, along with a USB-C-to-Lightning cable, to charge your iPhone quicker than you can with the standard iPhone or iPad chargers.

But is it worth the $75 that those accessories will cost? Is charging really so much faster? According to tests run by software engineer and startup investor Dan Loewenherz, the answer is no.

Gadgets to make traveling easy [Tech Travel Tips]

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roost stand
Travel is a time to leave things behind, but some gadgets will make your trips a lot easier.
Photo: Roost

tech travel tips Welcome to Tech Travel Tips, a week of travel tips for vacationers. This week we’ll show you how to keep your devices safe while traveling, what apps to download before you go, what settings you should change before leaving the house and — kicking off the week — the best travel gadgets to take with you. Let’s get started!

Solar charger is big enough to blot out the sun [Reviews]

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Solartab solar charger
Solartab will fit in your bag. But it won't leave much room for the things you might want to charge.
Photo: Evan Killham/Cult of Mac

Solartab 5.5-watt solar charger

It’s a problem when you get caught away from home with a dead phone. And it’s a bigger problem when you find yourself stranded with a dead phone and a flatlined portable charger. But one company has come up with a solution to both of those problems.

Solartab is a power source with a massive capacity and a handy ability: It draws energy from the sun like Superman. It can hold an impressive 13,000 mAh, which is enough to recharge an iPad Air 2 twice or an iPhone more than five times, depending on your model. And the best part is that all of this power is basically free.

The worst part, though, is that the Solartab is massive.

Who says a car charger needs to look boring?

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Lust List Tylt car charger
The Ribbn lends a touch of style to your car-charging game.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Best List: Ribbn car charger by Tylt

Simple, elegant and fun, the Ribbn car charger is no-muss, no-fuss.

Offering up 4.8 amps, Tylt’s little Lightning charger plugs into a standard cigarette lighter socket and adds a bit of bright-blue bling to your car’s interior.

Keep your MacBook powered for days with this smart backpack

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Ampl backpack is all charged up. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
The SmartBackpack from AMPL will keep your gadgets optimally charged all day. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
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LAS VEGAS — Companies are throwing sensors into everything this year. Toothbrushes, cookie jars, mouth guards … you name it, and someone is trying to cram some sort of sensor into it. Next up is your backpack.

Cult_of_Mac_CES_2015 AMPL Labs’ upcoming SmartBackpack promises to keep your tech items safe and charged for days by combining “smartsensors” with battery packs woven into the fabric. The end result is a supercharging backpack that can tackle anything from an iPhone to a MacBook, allowing wearers to charge multiple devices on the go.

“We found that 85 percent of consumers worry about their devices running out of power at least once a week,” said AMPL’s David Migdal. “So we developed our SmartBackpack to address all their power needs.”

The Cult of Mac Guide to Traveling Light

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Everything for a couple weeks away, including transport.
Everything for a couple weeks away, including transport. Photos: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Travel can be a chance to practice minimalism, or an opportunity to drive yourself nuts. What am I talking about? Luggage. You can pare down your essentials to fit in a carry-on – even if you’re away for a month – or you can throw in every item of clothing and every charger you have. The second approach will result in a broken back, and you’ll still find that you left something essential at home.

Over the years, I’ve perfected my packing technique so that I only take the bare minimum. And when I say “perfected,” I mean “struggled with.” But it works for me, and the principles can be applied even if you’re the kind of person who hires a boy to carry your trunks for you when you take a cruise on the Titanic.

So here’s the Cult of Mac Guide to Traveling Light, a roundup of strategies, product recommendations and other tips to make your next trip a breeze.

Gadget roundup: The week’s best gear for travelers, campers and chefs

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The week's best gadget announcements, rolled up into a nougaty gallery.
The week's best gadget announcements, rolled up into a nougaty gallery.

Cooking, charging, camera-ing and generally staying out-of-doors are the themes this week. But if you are stuck inside out of the sun, don’t worry – we have you covered too.

This week we get cooking with a gadget-charging camping stove and a slick, iPhone-friendly food thermometer. We also do DIY projects (without tenderizing our thumbs) with the German Latthammer, charge our flagging phones with a purse that packs a built-in battery, and record everything using the super-dorky Lifelogger camera. Is the sun shining? Yes it is!

Tiny BOLT Is A Charger And Backup Battery In One

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The little BOLT Charger Battery is as clever as it is good looking. The USB wall-charger packs a backup battery into its tiny body, as body that leads its maker to call it the “The World’s Smallest Wall Charger + Battery Backup.”

I’m not sure how true that it, but who cares? It fits in your pocket and it’ll juice your iPhone twice, even without a wall to shove it into.

Scosche’s superCUBE flip Improves On Apple’s Cuboid iPhone Charger

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Ever “hefted” the standard North American iPhone charging cube in your hand and thought, “Boy, this thing would be way better if the prongs would fold up, and maybe if the thing could juice an iPad as well as my iPhone. And hey, why not make it black so I can lose it more easily too?”

Well, you’re not alone, because somebody at Scosche thought the exact same thing, and the superCUBE flip was born.

iQi Adapter Proves Wireless Charging Isn’t Ready For The Mainstream [Review]

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iQi Wireless Charger by Fone Salesman
Category: Chargers
Works With: iPhone 5/S
Price: $21 plus ~$25 for charging pad

Wireless charging is a beautiful concept that fails to live up to its promise in reality. That’s not to say it’s unusable – far from it. I’d put wireless charging pads in the same place as Wi-Fi was some years back – useful when it works, but frustrating to get working properly.

The little iQi panel goes some way to fixing up the main problem of wireless charging on the iPhone. Because it’s not built in, you usually need a bulky case to pair with the charger itself. The iQi is so tiny it can be used with any case.

Tylt Vu Combines Wireless Charging With Handy Dock

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The Tylt Vu wireless charger looks like it would make a great iDevice stand, even if it didn’t have an induction charger hidden inside. The idea is that it not only charges your iPhone, but the shape of it means that the iPhone is always positioned in just the right spot to let the magnets do their thing, even if you just toss it into the cradle.

Jumper Card Packs Lightning, 30-Pin And MicroUSB Into Credit Card-Sized Package

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Back in the 1980s, and probably continuing into the 1990s, every neat gadget was shoehorned into a credit-card-shaped form factor. Magnifying glass? Credit-card-sized. Vinyl record de-duster? Credit-card-sized. And so on.

The Jumper Card continues this excellent heritage by putting a Lightning charger, a 30-pin dock connector and a microUSB charger into the same credit-card-sized package, ready to be slipped into your pocket. But not your wallet, because, like all “credit-card-sized” gadgets, this one is way too thick.

Tunewear TUNEMAX Charger Can Handle 5 USB Devices At Once

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When I lived in an my crumbling old apartment in Barcelona, I had more USB-charing devices that I had power points in my office. And even in the relatively modernity of an East German apartment block, I don’t want to plug in a separate box my iPhone, iPad, bike lights, Kindle… Etc. What I need is the Tunewear TUNEMAX 5USB Charger, a five-way USB charger with a name a rapper could be proud of.

Power Boost Keychain: A Backup Battery… On A Keychain

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I’m a great example of why backup iPhone batteries don’t really work. I have a stack of the things in all shapes and sizes, and yet where are they when I need them? At home in a gray felt cat house (don’t ask). I just never remember to take the things with me.

Photojojo’s new Power Boost Keychain aims to change that, putting a smallish battery pack and charing cable on a keychain. Now you’ll never leave the thing at home. Or if you do, you’ll be locked out, and you won’t be able to call a locksmith.

PhoneSoap Cleanses Your Filthy iPhone With Pristine UV Light

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filth

Christmas is a filthy time of year. First, it’s in the middle of the winter, when coughs, sneezes and dirty old diseases are most common. And second, extra germs, bacteria and viruses hitch a ride on us meatbag humans as we jet around the globe to see our families, swirling the air into a slurry of septicity.

It’s no wonder Santa spends the rest of the year in bed.

What you need to counteract this insurgence of influenza is the PhoneSoap charger, a kind of Howard Hughes-style tissue box for your iPhone, only with a UV lamp inside.

PowerPak Ultra, The Rugged Battery Pack ‘Built For Extremists’

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It used to be OK to ask a stranger in a bar “do you have a Nokia charger?” and borrow said charger for a while to juice your phone. These days, though, you’ll mark yourself out as a Low-Charge Loser, the kind of person who goes to bed without plugging in his iPhone. Worse, you’re probably carrying more than just a phone. Are you really going to ask a stranger for adapters to charge your iPad and Kindle too?

You are not. What you need is a beefy backup battery. And at this time of year, it should be waterproof, too.

iPhone Charger Uses DeWalt Power Tool Batteries For Juice

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I haven’t spent time on a construction site for some time, so I don’t know if it’s still true that every builder has a transistor radio. I do know that we had our kitchen remodeled a few months back and the guy our landlord sent to do it had the same kind of plaster and dirt-caked mains-powered radio you have been able to see for decades the world over.

He also seemed to spend a lot of time texting instead of working, so maybe he could have done with one of these iPhone chargers that uses a DeWalt battery pack for power.

Kyte & Key’s Cabelet, A Lightning Cable You Can Wear

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Ever find yourself stuck without a cable when you need to charge your iPhone? No, me either. I’m a nerd and a professional gadget tester, so at pretty much all times I have some kind of Lightning cable, dock or adapter either on my person or close to hand.

But if I got out more, and was more stylish in general, then I’d be sporting a Kyte & Key Cabelet, or cable bracelet.