Want a Portable Way to Charge Your Smartphone? How About for $2 a Day?


AnkerBoxChargingStation2Computer accessory maker Anker has been around for a while. If you were to find yourself needing an extra cable, portable charger or battery pack, the company is quite the prestigious choice on Amazon. In a world of heavy smartphone users, stuck with quickly draining batteries and nowhere to turn, Anker decided to launch a different kind of service as an experiment- renting battery packs. Yup. Anker wants to aid in the department of battery depression by making itself a “charger-as-a-service” solution.

AnkerBoxChargingStation1Despite the initial silly look you had on your face when reading this headline, think about how essential it is for your smartphone to be juiced up while you’re away from your home. Now think about how despite the fast-paced evolution of technology lately, not to mention the drastic developments in smartphone power, there doesn’t seem to be a established smartphone on the market that can keep your device juiced up all day. Sure, there are ways to avoid the panic attack, like battery packs, which are heavy as heck to lug around, or the tried and true race to the highly populated Starbucks plug thing, but nothing is very convenient. Anker thinks the answer lies in the AnkerBox remedy, omitting the worry of having to (remember to) charge before you go, or being tethered to a big box or pad.

AnkerBoxChargingStationFor $1.99 per day, or free for up to 30 minutes, AnkerBox is a charging station with six 6,700mAh portable battery packs. The AnkerBox stays in your house, but before leaving for the day, all you do is request a battery from the station, using the AnkerBox app on your mobile device. SlashGear says the boxes are installed by Anker “at participating establishments, mostly restaurants, bars, gyms, and of course, coffee shops”. April 15th is when the AnkerBox program will be piloted in about 200 establishments around the city of Seattle, Washington. Hopefully this program will provide incentive for both parties, both the vendor and the vendee. If I knew an AnkerBox was located at my second, but not first choice for a coffee shop, I’d surely be hitting up my second choice more often. But because this is an experimental program “to see if there’s actually a market out there for this kind of thing” says Geek, we’ll have to wait and see how the 200 places in Seattle react to it before we can pray for some in Austin.

Topics: Technology News Battery & Power Technology Inventions & Innovations Smartphones & Mobile Devices

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