A Chinese company reinvents iPhone charging and wins big on Kickstarter

Aug 24, 2014 10:15 GMT  ·  By
How often do you charge your iPhone? Once a day? Once every 15 hours? But what do you do when the battery is low and you still have half a day to cover?

Sure, a car or wall charger is always nearby, but that keeps you stuck next to an outlet. Power banks solve the problems, but they are not Apple-like. A team from Shenzhen, China managed to find the best way to charge your iPhone and it involves something that is similar to the MagSafe connector on your Mac. 

 
Cabin is described as a slim aluminum portable battery. At first sight it looks like one of those Mophie packs. The trick is in the way the battery case connects to your iPhone, through a magnetic adapter. 
 
Its developers bring back the old debate of the best way to charge your iPhone while on the go. A battery case is big, ugly and requires a microUSB cable. A power bank is either underpowered or too bulky and still requires a cable to work. Wireless charging would be ideal, but you cannot sync data over it and it requires a power source and a large base so your phone is stuck in one place. 
 
Cabin looks like a battery case, but it doesn't wrap around the phone. The device works like a cradle that magnetically attaches to your phone lightning port. The developers have designed a small magnetic adapter that plugs into your phone and then attaches to the case. The main benefits of the device is that is easily removable, it looks great and the little magnetic piece can be adapted for multiple uses. 
 
When it comes to charging the case you can either do that in the same time with the iPhone or separately. The case is made of aluminum and it looks like it came right out of Apple's Headquarters in Cupertino. The internal battery of the case is a 2200mAh one so it's going to charge your iPhone about one and a half times before it is depleted. 
 
The developers have created a good looking dock for the Cabin case. You can place the phone right on the dock and it is going to start charging right away thanks to the magnetic bit. Because the dock and the case have the regular lightning cable attached, you can sync the phone in the same time. 
 
The last accessory working with the magnetic bit is a so-called MagAdapter. You plug the lightning cable on one side and attach it magnetically to your phone. Sure, you may ask why would someone need to use two other accessories when you could just plug the cable right into the phone. Well, the main reason is similar to why you love your MagSafe adapter on your MacBook Pro. If someone trips in your cord the phone will not be dragged to the ground. 
 
The Kickstarter campaign has only a few days to go, but the developers went well over their goal of $50,000 (€37,643.11) and have raised $177290 (€133474.94) to this date. You can still catch the early train on this. For $59 (€44.42) you can get a Cabin Dock, MagAdaptor and MicroAdaptor. Pay $135 (€101.64) and receive the complete bundle: all of the above and the Cabin case. 
 

Cabin Case and accessories (8 Images)

Cabin Case looks amazing
Cabin and all the accessoriesMagAdapter is like a MagSafe connector for your iPhone
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