So raise your hand if you have an iPhone 4 or 4S. Now lower your hand if you are satisfied with its battery life. How come your hands still up? (insert troll meme)Yeah… I didn’t think so. Now if you had an Android device or pretty much any other type of smart phone or even feature phone (not a smart phone for those who don’t know that lingo) you could just buy an extra battery or two (I have 5 extras) and an external charger and keep a spare with you when you go out. Thus, whenever you find yourself with the blinking red indicator or low-battery warning message, you just power it off, swap batteries, and power it back up. Voila! You’re good to go for another X amount of hours. But alas, one of the iPhone’s glaring weaknesses is its sheer difficulty and inconvenience in swapping batteries (it requires tools and knowledge that the average user does not have in their wallet or purse).

Thus the market for external batteries and battery cases exploded to fill in that gap. The downside though is that these external batteries and cases still need to be charged by plugging them into an outlet or via USB. Not the most practical if you are not near a power supply for an extended period of time (traveling, camping, etc.).

Well, thankfully, there’s a whole new (yes this term can be debated as Citizen launched kinetic energy technology back in 1980s-but I digress) batch of devices that harness the cleanest and most available source of energy: Kinetic energy! This is essentially the power of movement.

So how does it work?

The different forms of kinetic energy are vibrational, rotational and translational, which are obtained by vibrational motion, rotational motion, and motion from one location to another respectively. The devices are often built around the piezoelectric crystal. When the crystal is compressed or squeezed, they generate a high voltage electric charge across their surface. This charge is led off by an electronic circuit and stored in a capacitor. Each time the piezoelectric crystal is subjected to a force, a burst of energy gets generated and stored.

The benefits

There are vast benefits of kinetic chargers and some of them are listed below:

-      The above-listed gadgets produce clean, green and dependable renewable energy for charging your electronic gadgets.

-      You need not to struggle extra to generate power and these chargers can generate power while walking, jogging, cycling, or driving.

-      The gadgets are normally low cost and highly reliable.

-      Many of these devices can be carried in purse or your backpack.

-      In emergency, when you are not moving, you can move them and generate energy.

Here are three devices that utilize kinetic energy:

The first is Viber Burst. Designed by Josh Pell this device has gotten a lot of hype on the internet however, the exact details of this product such as: how much power can it store; how much power can it provide; how long it takes to charge (some say 2 seconds which I think is impossible); and how much it cost. After scouring the internet (google was surprisingly unhelpful) I gave up and just went with the generic info that other sites received:

“Josh Pell, a student designer atSwinburneUniversity, has developed a concept charger known as Viber Burst, which can harness the power of motion, be it in your bag, your hand and even your shoes to charge a cellphone. Once fully charged the device can dump all that energy into your cellphone’s battery in just two seconds.”

-Ecofriend

I still think the 2 seconds claim is rubbish, but I’d like to be proven wrong.

M2E portable charger

Then there is the M2E portable charger that is roughly the size of a deck of cards and can even be charged through the conventional method. It comes with a USB slot that can be used to charge any USB-compliant device. It gathers power from cumulative motion from walking, jogging, cycling, or driving. Six hours of motion provides 30 to 60 minutes of extra power.

My personal favourite: iYo

The iYo is an induction charger that contains a small Li-ion battery inside. It charges with only 30 cranks and has a USB slot so almost anything could be plugged into it for charging. It also looks awesome! It only provides enough juice for 10-15 minutes though but its still awesome!