Wires suck, we’ll start with that. Anytime I go on a trip, wires always get tangled, broken, or lost. External batteries are the same when it comes to this. I’m traveling to CES soon and will have several external batteries with me. Alongside those batteries? Well, I’ll have cables. Tons and tons of cables. Cables for my MacBook, iPad, iPhone, Bose QC35 headphones, Apple Watch, and more.
Whenever I need to use that external battery, I’ll have to find the matching cable and plug it in to use it. And when that external battery dies? I’ll have to plug it back in to charge it. Avido is aiming to solve those problems, and recently announced WiBa, an external battery that not only charges your phone wirelessly via the Qi standard but charges itself wirelessly.
External batteries are great tools when we remember to charge them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve grabbed one of my power banks when running out of the house only to find it’s dead. Remembering to plug in the batteries isn’t the hardest thing ever, but in our busy lives, it is something we can easily overlook.
There are batteries on the market already that can charge your phone wirelessly, like the mophie Powerstation. But, something that these batteries lack is the ability to recharge themselves wirelessly. That’s where Avido’s WiBa comes in. WiBa is an external battery that can be recharged via the Qi wireless standard.
Imagine this: sitting at your bedside is a Qi wireless charger with a battery on top of it. When you go to bed, your phone goes on top of that battery and starts charging. After waking up and getting ready, you grab both your phone and battery and run out the door. Now, when you’re out, you have 5000mAh of juice to keep your phone going for hours on end throughout your hectic workday. At the end of your busy day, you just set the battery back on the charger when you get home, and back to full it goes. That’s the benefit of WiBa.
Now, WiBa is not the most affordable battery out there, that’s for sure. At $99.95 for a 5000mAh battery, there are many more affordable options on the market. In fact, mophie’s Powerstation is $99.99 and features 10000mAh of juice and wireless charging, but only one way. WiBa’s premium price comes from the dual-purpose wireless charging.
To help make sure your phone stays aligned, Avido includes two slim metal plates to go on your phone or case that will automatically align your device to WiBa’s Qi coils. This makes it super simple to keep your phone charging and also helps keep the phone and power bank together when moving around.
In case your phone doesn’t support wireless charging, and you still want to use WiBa to juice up, there’s a normal USB-A port on the side to power extra devices. And if you’re away from a Qi charger, WiBa has a USB-C port on it for easy recharging with wires if the need arises.
Launching later this year, WiBa is more of an executive product than a game-changer, but it’s the first of hopefully many items to help bring us one step closer to a truly wireless world.
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