Jump on a train or bus, listen to some music, send a few Tweets and make a call, and before long your smartphone will have lost a hefty amount of battery life.
If you’re the hyper-organised kind you’ll have packed a charger before you left home, if not you’ll be hoping to scrounge a few minutes with someone else’s.
The second group will want to have look the Nomad Chargekey – a new product currently wowing the tech set which just might be the solution to smartphone charging woes.
Only slightly bigger than a standard house key, the Chargekey is a flexible rubber charging ‘cable’ which fits on your keyring so is always with you whenever you need to top up your phone.
Nomad makes two versions – one with a ‘Lightening’ connector for Apple’s iPhone 5, 5C and 5S and newer iPads plus another for Android and other handsets with a Micro USB port.
At the other end of both models is a standard USB connector for plugging into a PC or Mac. Unlike the standard cables most phones ship with, there’s no plug end to allow you to connect to an electrical socket.
I’ve been using the iPhone 5 version for the past week or so (Disclaimer: the review unit was supplied by Nomad at no cost) and have been impressed at its build quality. Despite being made of a lightweight rubber, the Chargekey feels robust enough to be chucked into pockets and bags without tearing, cracking or breaking.
And the flexible, twistable housing means you can angle and bend the Chargekey to ensure that larger devices – such as the full-size iPad Air – can charge without knocking against the power source.
If you regularly travel with your laptop you’ll appreciable being able to top-up your phone’s charge without having to pack additional cables, and charging speed appears to be pretty much equal to Apple’s official cable so you’re not going to sacrifice speed for convenience.
Nomad sell the Chargekey for $25 which is around the same £15 Apple will sell you a spare cable for and at that price we think it’s a good value solution for anyone having to regularly top up their battery.
Non-US customers currently get free Fedex shipping when they order two or more – so be sure to team up with a friend if you’re thinking of buying.
For more details, pricing and ordering pop along to hellonomad.com
