Spotted at CES 2025, a strange box-like device is said to be capable of charging smartphones in just two seconds: A promise bold enough to cause a stir at the Las Vegas tech show.
The Swippitt is an innovative device designed to recharge a smartphone extremely quickly. But since the promise of charging your smartphone in two seconds seems a little too good to be true, there’s inevitably a catch.
In fact, it’s not your smartphone that’s being recharged here, but an external battery built into a dedicated case. So it’s not the smartphone alone that you insert into the device, but the handset equipped with its “Link” case, which houses an additional battery. This battery then gets swapped at lightning speed for a new, full one once inside the Swippitt.
The device looks like a toaster, into which you slide your smartphone and in which the battery swap takes place. In fact, it’s a veritable docking station that can accommodate and charge several 3,500 mAh batteries simultaneously. This means that several people in the same household could switch their batteries in no time at all.
This ingenious system of interchangeable batteries enables almost instantaneous recharging. At present, the system is only compatible with iPhone 14, 15 and 16, with a view to its rapid expansion to Android-based devices. A mobile application accompanies the device, enabling users to monitor the charge level of the various batteries.
The concept of “recharging” your smartphone in two seconds is more than appealing, but ultimately, all that’s going on here is swapping a depleted removable battery for a fully-charged one.
While we’re still a long way from being able to charge smartphone batteries in a matter of seconds, progress in this area has been quite spectacular in recent years, especially on the part of Chinese manufacturers.
In 2024, Realme unveiled a 320W fast-charging technology capable of fully recharging a 4,420 mAh battery in less than five minutes. Xiaomi and Oppo also offer technologies capable of fully recharging a (high-end) handset in less than 10 minutes.
The Consumer Electronic Show (CES) runs until Jan 10, 2025, in Las Vegas. – AFP Relaxnews
