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This is awesome! For only $450 you can get a machine that can automatically swap battery packs placed on bulky $120 phone cases.
You don’t need to plug a cable in your phone anymore, your over engineered machine can swap battery packs for you
I never imagined that I would live this long to see the future
A charging pad takes up way less space, costs way less, and is something you don’t have to plug into your phone.
Still, you could buy a whole bunch of nice MagSafe chargers for that kind of money. But what Swippitt offers is a tidier solution, one you don’t really have to think about.
I don’t really know how much mental labor I’m performing placing my phone on the nightstand every night.
Sounds super wasteful… It seems like the bigger the threat of climate change fucking up all of us the bigger the number of CEOs shooting shit into space and shitty “innovative” start-ups being founded
Wow, if only someone could find a way to miniaturize and “reimagine” this technology to put it in the phone itself…
Oh, right.
Why do so many western start ups come up with ways to make something simple complicated? This gives me lots of juicero vibes.
I mean a phone case with a removable battery? Yeah that’s cool. Already been done though … a very long time ago.
https://www.wired.com/2011/05/third-rail-case-adds-removable-battery-to-iphone/
But I don’t need a machine to take out the battery and replace it. It’s just something else to take up room on my nightstand and eventually break. I’d bet they somehow figure out a way to make it a subscription service too.
I worked at Apple for a while and I can see a use case for this.
It was a little annoying to have to change your iPhone with the card reader attached (for taking payment and stuff in the shop floor) when it was out of battery. You would have to go upstairs and grab another one off charge, sign in, two factor, and then go downstairs to carry on. Only this one won’t pair with the card reader so you gotta do it again.
If you could just do this like the toaster then time saved would be a lot across a company.
I was thinking the same for a similar use case at my job that would nearly cut the number of phones we own in half, but we don’t need the stupid toaster to remove and replace the battery. I’m a goddamn cripple and can do that myself.
“Do you want to charge the free 20%?”
Yeah I had one of those charger cases for my S7
2010s replaceable battery phones: look what they need to mimic fraction of our power.
At least with an external battery pack you don’t have to reboot your phone (which is a minor inconvenience, as a FP5 owner).
2010s?
Laughs in Nokia
“There’s no AI of dubious value”
The whole thing is of little to no value. Maybe a good idea for people with physical limitations like bad arthritis where swapping a battery might be difficult, but for the average person it’s tech vaporware waiting to fail.
At which point even the ones who it does help will no longer be able to use it because it probably depends on an online connection for no good reason.
Didn’t even think of that, but true. The device would only work as long as a service provider is willing to support it. Or your subscription runs out.
Swapable batteries were common on cell phones in the 80’s and 90’s except no fancy machine was needed.
Some fairly recent phones even had docks that would charge your phone and a swappable battery at the same time
That’s whole century.
You mean a decade. A century is 100 years.
I mean /s
……fuck.
and… get this: while you were swapping your battery you could drop in a swappable expansion on storage. Utter madness.
Many phones let you upgrade storage without opening it. Madness, I know.
I was using an LG G5 that had swappable batteries 3 years ago.
90’s, definitely.
Which 80’s models mobiles are you thinking of, exactly?
The Motorola DynaTAC. They had a big Ni-Cd battery that is also the back of the case. You would need often need two batteries to get through a whole day, so they were made to be easily swapped.
IKR.
Why did we start building batteries into phones?
Because we kept buying thinner and lighter phones, and gluing the battery in makes thinner and lighter phones with better battery life possible. As a convenient side effect glue creates a nice watertight seal that can make devices more water resistant.
Hrm maybe.
I mean a wristwatch can be 200m water resistant and still be user servicable. A simple rubber gasket, some silicone grease and some screws.
So they can sell you a new phone instead of a replacement battery.
I’m getting Juicero vibes
Right? This is so stupid
I especially love the sound! This thing is hilarious, can’t wait to read the disaster postmortem in a few years time.
Years? If this part of ever actually gets released it’ll last about 6 months before they stop production. It’s massively expensive and completely pointless.
So… you’re essentially carrying around a power bank on the back of your phone all the time? Seems like a gimmick at best.
Honestly, fast charging has turned this into such a non-issue that you’ll be hard pressed to find a more convenient solution.
Love my Newdery batt case on my s20fe. 2 full charges, charge slow all night for both. Extra in case I game or use a lot, and my battery will last longer.
The biggest issue for me is compatibility.
Swippitt works with any phone as long as there’s a case designed for it. That way, a single hub can serve a whole household of people with different phone models.
Makes sense. Similar to the replacement phone batteries we used to have…
At launch, it will offer cases for the iPhone 14, 15, and 16 series, and the company plans to expand with Samsung Galaxy S series cases by the end of 2025.
Soo… They’ll support some iPhones at launch, and in about a year, they hope to support some Galaxy phones. If being a hub is one of your selling points, that’s a very underwhelming, limited list.
Right?
$450 and a toaster to use something like the external batteries I’ve used for a decade.
I worked as a consultant at a product development firm. One of our clients had us making a kitchen appliance that would take a “pod” of some kind (like Keurig).
Their little ad video that they made before involving us had a little CG video showing the pod floating into the receiver and sliding down into the machine.
When we showed them the prototype, the first question we got is if the pod receiver thing was motorized.
Like…no. You push it down. Takes 1 second.
Anyway replacing a phone battery does not need to be automated.
This doesn’t even replace the phone battery, it changes an external charging case.
We have these in bars etc, they let you rent a charged power bank. This is just that with added complexity.
Pretty sure it’s not changing out the whole case. Besides why would you do that? Plus there’s a pic of the case with a slot on the side the battery slides in and out of.
Coming Soon: A subscription model where you pay $10 a month for the ability to use your $450 battery swapper.
And you need a special mandatory app on the phone to use it. It needs all permissions and tracks you. It downloads audio ads and uploads them to the swapper while swapping, so it can play them while you sleep.
App Update: Fitness tracker permissions can now tell when you are sleeping, so the app only plays ads when you are awake and actively looking at your device.
I don’t see the use case for phones, and maybe there is for other personal electronics, but something similar for EVs should become the norm.
Basically a range extender when you need it, but it can be removed to save on weight when your trips are within the built-in battery’s range. Such a system could easily be extended to trailers, including their own static or removable batteries, and where the additional axles could be powered so they can contribute regenerative braking.
Most EVs can now do 200 plus miles on a full charge so I really don’t think range extenders are that necessary (especially when combined with level 3 fast charging). Plus where would you put it? The batteries on an EVs are stored on the undercarriage and they pretty much take up the entirety of the undercarriage, if there was extra space left over you would just put a permanent battery in there.
The batteries are what make EVs heavier compared to ICE vehicles, and the majority of trips don’t call for anything close to their peak range.
Installing a fraction of the capacity as a static battery would reduce weight for shorter trips, also extending the typical range.
Removable batteries could be installed in a standard cavity in the undercarriage, or in the regular cargo space, it just needs an electrical connection to the rest of the system.
Fast charging is also a problem, as it disproportionately affects the performance and longevity of the batteries. Swapping batteries would permit charging them at a more leisurely and manageable rate.
You have to account for all of the additional hardware that is required to enable swapping of batteries. Have you ever picked up an EV battery they are incredibly heavy and huge. I really can’t see how you would do it without using the kind of engine lifting equipment that mechanics have.
I can’t see it as practical or safe to allow general members of the public to use them. Even if you can pick them up, which you can just about do, you would seriously risk injuring your back.
The fuck? Use a battery pack…
This issue has been solved for years.
How does this make any sense when buying 2 of the cases is half the price while also faster and easier to swap? It would maybe make sense if it swapped out the actual phone battery. Maybe that’s their end goal, but how does it make sense at all to sell this as a real product?
