Battery life is still a major bugbear for most smartphone owners. What do you when you don’t have a charger with you? Do you lug around a portable battery pack? Though they’re definitely getting sleeker and more compact, you may prefer something smaller still. The Kado Wallet is easily the slimmest phone charger we’ve ever seen. It’s so svelte, in fact, that you can slot it into your wallet.
There are two parts to this charger. One has fold-out prongs, so it can be plugged into a standard power outlet. The other has a coiled cable that you can pull out to plug into your phone. It feels about the thickness of three credit cards, and it’s very light.
The Kado Wallet comes with a 2-foot-long Lightning, MicroUSB, or USB Type-C cable built in, but that’s not all, because you can also slide the charger apart in the middle to reveal a USB connection that allows you to plug it into a laptop or computer for data transfer.
The maximum power output is 10 watts, so the charger will support some of the latest quick charge capabilities. The Kado Wallet will be available this summer and is set to be priced around $40 to $50. It’s not the only slimmed-down charger Kado has been working on. The company is focused on making charging easier and more portable.
“We call it the vicious cycle of mobile immobility, because we are always looking to increase our mobility, and in order to do so we increase the charger speed, but this increases the charger size,” Kado co-CEO Itay Hasid told Digital Trends. “We want to create truly portable solutions to keep your gadgets charged.”
Kado has also developed a portable wall charger for your laptops and tablets. The Kado Sleeve is the width of a pencil and sports two USB ports at one end. Fold it in half and you’ll reveal the prongs to plug into a standard wall outlet. It’s a 70-watt charger and can be used to charge up two devices simultaneously. It’s also expected to go on sale this summer and it will cost around $100.
These slim chargers are impressive, but what we’d really like to see is a portable charger with a built-in battery that could fit in our wallets. According to Kado’s Co-CEO, Itay Hasid, it’s in the works. We’ll keep you posted.