From a slow start a few years ago, small external battery packs – aka “juice boxes” – have proliferated and beefed up as more and more Americans, particularly small business people, depend on mobile devices that use up their overtaxed internal batteries at inconvenient times. Sure, there are bars or some other symbols in a corner somewhere to indicate remaining battery life but are they dependable? One of the sources for extending the operational life of those mobile devices, and giving you accurate assessments of remaining battery life, is Powerocks.
Carrie Adams is director of marketing for Offwire, the exclusive U.S. distributor of the 10-year-old Powerocks brand. She had just returned from the massive national Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas when Corp! caught up with her. “The theme of the show was wearables,” Adams said, and while Powerocks external power sources aren’t exactly wearable, most of them could fit easily in a pocket, purse “or in a 12-year-old’s backpack,” where her daughter keeps hers. The Chinese company that makes Powerocks invested some $30 million last year in R&D in an ongoing effort to maintain safety standards as well as develop new products, according to Adams. Thanks in part to that kind of investment the batteries’ failure rate is less than 1 percent. Their performance, as well as their safety record, led to Powerocks being approved by Apple in 2003 not only as a vendor but at the laboratory level – “that’s huge” exclaims Adams.
The newest Powerocks offering, unveiled at CES, is a candy-colored tube “about the size of a lipstick,” says Adams. An industry publication then named Powerocks one of the top 20 Apple-centric products at the show, though Powerocks are not limited to the Apple universe. The new product not only provides replacement power but has a built-in LED flashlight. That’s the result of feedback from customers, says Adams. They were confused about an earlier version that had an LED to indicate charge level and suggested instead that a more powerful version could actually be useful as a flashlight. Power and lifestyle Customers are also continually asking for more capacity, more milliamps, explains Adams. Asked for a layperson’s explanation of milliamps, Adams gives it a shot. “In your standard devices, such as a smartphone, you have a battery that will give you, say, 1,700 milliamps to start with.” According to online technology publication CNET, those 1,700 milliamps will get you anywhere from 3 to 19 hours of talk-time on a mobile phone. Adams says that one of her Powerocks will “give an average iPhone two full additional charges before the charger itself will need recharging.”
Source: Corp! Magazine
