Even if you’re not a Macbook user, you may well be familiar with the Magsafe adaptors that Apple uses on them. The link between your laptop and the charger is (as the name suggests) magnetic, easy to engage and quite easy to disconnect which makes it safe for you to have around children or clumsy people without the fear of your charger being tripped on, thus destroying your precious laptop. A new Kickstarter project had emerged that offers this functionality to mobile phones & tablets on both sides of the fence, both iOS and Android.
The design is simple but very effective to achieve the end goal; it’s as simple as
- insert the connector into your device
- connect the adaptor to your charging cable
- SNAP and charge
With several advantages for users such as reversible charging (i.e. you can link the adaptor and connector either way around, it doesn’t matter), easy to attach and detach, it adds some waterproof protection to your charging port, protection for your charging cable and possibly the most important – VERY affordable it’s easy to see why ZNAPS has not just raced past their Kickstarter goal but more than tripled it in a few days.
It looks really useful for people who are often plugging their phone in for a “quick top up” or like me… try to walk away with devices that are still plugged in. Looking at it though, you’ll need to invest in enough connectors and adaptors for all your regular charging points and devices to make it truly worthwhile though. If this sounds like something you might be drawn to, check out their Kickstarter page and back the project.
Ed. As is usual with any Kickstarter project, we report it because we think it’s interesting. We can’t offer any guarantee that the product in question will enter production, or work as depicted. Caveat emptor.
Will you be backing the ZNAPS on Kickstarter, or will you wait for it to hit retail shelves?
someone said apple has a patent on these….
Someone…..mmmm
Im not into gossip myself.
Whenever you have a monster company, theres always someone who wants a piece of you.
Kickstarter…. Nope…just no. Burnt once on a failed project, lost my money. Won’t be rushing to do that again. I’ll wait for it to hit retail shelves!
There are also other knock off? (or are these the knock off) already selling on ebay, that are shipping today!
Can you link to these? I can only find magnetic chargers for Sony devices.
can’t post url links here (they get blocked), but if you google “Wsken Micro USB charger” you should find the ebay and aliexpress links to the product.
That said, I do like the Znaps ones better, but I have a feeling this is going to end in tears. They are upto $645K dollars already, if they screwed up the sums at all, then the project is doomed!
It’s a nifty idea, but it still sticks out more than I’d like. It’s sorta like Pressy, which I backed, but looks absolutely ridiculous on the top of any new Motorola phone.
does it effect quick charge?
they state it doesn’t effect quick charge
This will be the product that makes me drop my boycott and become a
hypocrite. I’m thinking 5 micro USBs and 10 adapters should see me start.
WARNING if you haven’t figured it out from the dimensions the USB and Lightning
adapters are not cross compatible. so If you’re from a mixed household this
will not unify all of your charging cords. I have this confirmed from the kick-starter
creators
I can’t help but think that is a massive missed opportunity. Not only for end users, but for the manufacturing side of things, as they would only have needed to design one version of the magnetic interface.
Yes, I was very surprised, Having just one connector would have reduced their tooling and significantly increased flexibility. However there is the issue around iOS USB pin placement to consider micro usb has 5 pins and Lightning as 8 and I’m not sure they would map interchangably.
The other issue I belatedly realised is that a single magnetic interface would need to be the wider width to suit the micro USB, and then may not happily sit inside the charger cut out on many iPhone cases.
I’ve ordered two of these, one for my wife and one for me. Phones are charged daily so this will be pretty worthwhile. Tablets last a lot longer so I’ll just leave them I think.
If you have a heap of devices that you are always charging, get the custom combo reward so you can get connectors for all your devices and then just a few actual cables.