These days, if your smartphone battery isn’t up to par, you may own a phone that allows you to switch a dead battery for a fully charged one on the fly, or you may carry around a power pack. If your smartphone’s memory isn’t to your standard, try a MicroSD card. With those disappearing, though, many users resort to cloud storage and flash drives. If none of those solutions do it for you, you can always buy a case with those capabilities. But what about a phone case with all those capabilities and more coming in the future? Want more memory? Slot it in. A bigger battery? Slot it in. Perhaps health modules, fingerprint scanners and others down the road? Slot ’em on in there. That’s the proposal behind the Smartcase from i-Blades.
The project on Indiegogo, set for a $30,000 flex goal by January 31, promises a smartphone case with interchangeable modules to extend what the phone can do. Right now, only memory and battery modules are in the works, but high-def cameras, biometrics, interfaces like sliding keyboards and game controllers, plus a near-infinite number of other ideas are possible. While a bump in processing power or RAM, or a bigger screen seem to fall more in the wheelhouse of Project Ara or Fairphone, the Smartcase’s promise should not be understated. The modules will attach via magnets and be balanced for the best possible ergonomics.
As of this writing, every package on the campaign still has slots open. Backers can grab a spot in the “Hall of Fame” on the iBlades website or help decide what phones to make future Smartcase models for. Galaxy S6 and S4 owners can order an early bird case, get their hands on a case in polycarbonate or leather, with or without either a 2,600 mAh battery module or a 64GB memory module or both, and those willing to drop $600 are treated to a full terabyte of extra storage on your smartphone. HD gaming junkies, photography pros, audiophiles and mobile professionals should act fast if they want to go for it, though; there are only 5 slots for this perk and right now, 2 are taken. With 33 days left, the project is currently at $3,266.