Rubix's wireless battery sticks to your phone with magnets
When you're spending most part of the day out and about, chances are at some point you'll have to whip out your portable battery to juice up your smartphone. This usually means stacking your phone on top of a cable-wrapped power bank, and then clumsily holding everything together with one hand. Doesn't sound very 2015, does it? It's annoying enough for a startup called Rubix to come up with a solution: slap a magnetized Qi wireless charging case (aka On Case) on your phone, and then let it snap onto a magnetized wireless charging battery (aka On Charger). Look ma, no cable!
The 13.9mm-thick On Charger consists of a 5,000 mAh battery with two output options: a fast 2A current over a USB cable or a standard 1A over close-proximity wireless transmission. Better yet, the charger also has a wireless power receiver at the bottom (as indicated by the circular groove to fit the ring on the top side), which means not only can you plonk it onto any Qi wireless charging station, you can also stack one On Charger on top of another that's plugged in to charge them up simultaneously, albeit taking twice as long -- theoretically five hours -- if you give the bottom charger a 2A current over USB.
As for the On Case, Rubix's Kickstarter launch will do the iPhone 6 first, followed by stretch goals to bring the magnet-only On Cases for the already Qi-enabled Galaxy S6 plus Galaxy S6 Edge, as well as the bigger On Case for the iPhone 6 Plus. The charger is designed to be flush with the iPhone 6's case, and it isn't far off from the Galaxy S6 cases' shapes, so you should have no problem holding them together. And even if you hold just the phone part, the magnets are plenty strong to hold the battery, as we found out on a couple of prototypes. But is this battery-and-case bundle worthy of $89 and up? We'll let you be the judge.
