Du-ra-cell Pow-er-Mat: 24 Hour iPhone Pow-er So-lu-tion

The promise of in-duc-tion charg-ing is sim-ple: wire-less pow-er. If that sounds crazy, then you haven't at-tend-ed CES the past few years and seen the growth in the cat-e-go-ry. Grant-ed, we're still in the in-fant phase, where no ma-jor de-vices have the tech-nol-o-gy built-in, and the range is very, very lim-it-ed. These are still con-tact-based so-lu-tions; it will def-i-nite-ly be a bit be-fore you're able to draw juice for your bat-ter-ies through the air mag-i-cal-ly. But our pre-dic-tion: it will hap-pen, even-tu-al-ly, since bat-ter-ies are waste-ful, heavy, and in-ef-fi-cient.
One small step on the path: the Du-ra-cell Pow-er-Mat iPhone 4/4S 24 Hour Pow-er Sys-tem. Yes, some of us here have switched to the iPhone 5, and word is that a com-pat-i-ble ver-sion will be com-ing soon (as will a mod-el for the Sam-sung Galaxy S3). This is a small, cute sys-tem, avail-able in black or white (ours was white, prone to show-ing fin-ger-prints a bit more) and each has some classy metal-lic ac-cents. The ba-sic idea: lay it flat on your bed-side table, throw the in-clud-ed case on your phone, and then nev-er have to fum-ble with a plug- just lay your phone on the Pow-er-Mat and let it charge away. We've seen sim-i-lar sys-tems- ear-li-er mod-els have been around for a cou-ple of years now- but this is the best con-tender so far. Small enough to be portable, with clean-er de-sign, it's a sol-id pack-age.
This mod-el comes not on-ly with the re-quired charg-ing pad and iPhone case, but al-so with a fair-ly small and durable back-up bat-tery, for those who find them-selves drained of bat-tery life be-fore the day is done. If your phone is like ours, bat-tery life isn't quite what it used to be, and we reg-u-lar-ly find our smart-phone down be-low the dan-ger-ous 20% mark by the af-ter-noon. With the back-up bat-tery safe-ly stowed in a purse or pock-et, we can be as-sured of nev-er hav-ing to miss an In-sta-gram mo-ment or text mes-sage or im-por-tant call- as long as we keep the back-up bat-tery charged of course. It can sit next to your phone on the charg-ing pad and both de-vices can get topped up si-mul-ta-ne-ous-ly. It's not quite as fast as plug-ging in to the wall, though, and re-mem-ber that the sys-tem re-quires some align-ment- you can't just drop the phone or bat-tery any-where, but need to en-sure that there is mag-net-ic con-tact with cer-tain points.Quick note on the bat-tery- it's rat-ed at 1850 mAh- pret-ty im-pres-sive for it's size and weight, and it's not on-ly for Ap-ple prod-ucts. Much like the my-Charge line, there is al-so a flip-out Mi-cro USB con-nec-tor in ad-di-tion to the Ap-ple 30-pin adapter, which seemed like a nice sur-prise! You may be won-der-ing why- and it's a fair ques-tion. The an-swer in-volves the cus-tom case.