Remember how we were bemoaning the fact that the original SOSCharger didn’t work with smartphones? Well guess what, SOS Ready has heard the pleas of the smartphone owners and have put up a Kickstarter campaign for their newest line of hand-crank smartphone chargers.
Not only is this great for emergency situations like a blackout, it’s also great for camping trips too.The SOSCharger features a built-in generator and a 1,500 mAh Lithium Polymer battery. To power your device, simply turn the crank.
Of course, it’s going to take a little bit of time and effort to charge a dead phone. 3-5 minutes of cranking will generate 5-12 minutes of talk time which isn’t a lot, but it is enough time during those emergency situations to call for help or contact loved ones.
There’s also light indicators that will tell you when your device is charging and how much power is left in the battery. You don’t need to wait until your device is dead either. Simply plug in your power cord and do a couple minutes of cranking to keep your phone battery topped off.
If you don’t want to crank the device for power, you can plug it into any standard USB Wall charger to create a backup power source. The internal lithium battery will hold the charge for at least a couple days. If you want to charge your phone simply plug in the standard charging cable to the standard USB port on the SOSCharge. This also means that the charger works with other devices like the iPod, Blackberry and Kindle.
The device is relatively small, about the size of the iPod Classic so it’s easy to carry around.
At the moment, the SOSCharger has already exceeded its Kickstarter goal and still has 16 days left to receive more funding. The finished product will come with a USB cable for charging and powering and a Micro-fiber storage pouch. The product is slated to ship out August 2013 and will retail for around $50.
