Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's weekly roundup of the coolest collectibles around. This week: Star Wars! Sure we just got a whole bunch of them last Friday, but somehow the world managed to make space for even more Star Wars toys. Can you believe it? But there’s more than the galaxy far, far away to tempt your wallet…
There’s no point in buying a backup battery if you keep forgetting to top off your mobile devices before they die. So Griffin Technology’s new PowerBlock Beacon and PowerJolt Beacon external chargers will actually send your smartphone or tablet a notification when they’re nearby, reminding you to top off their…
We’ve been telling you for years that fake Apple chargers are bad news, but a new study shows they are even worse than we thought.
The original film was great, but there’s really only one reason any of us will be going to see the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel: Baby Groot. The film unfortunately doesn’t hit theaters until May of next year, but in the meantime Thinkgeek’s got something to tide you over with this dancing baby Groot car charger.
The microUSB cable that came with whatever gadget you need to charge every night probably works just fine, assuming you take care of it. But ThinkGeek still makes a strong argument for replacing it with this electroluminescent cable that makes the Millennium Falcon on the end look like it’s making the jump to…
Can you really consider finding a source of power to charge your smartphone a survival skill? For some people, not having a working phone is more dire than not having clean drinking water. So if you find yourself in the great outdoors without an outlet, a little ingenuity can turn random junk into a working…
Pokémon Go’s dependency on mobile data and your GPS location will ravage your smartphone’s battery in no time. So if you don’t already carry a portable charger to keep you powered and playing, this hand-made Pokeball battery is a must-have addition to your Pokémon hunting kit.
Benson Leung, an engineer on Google’s Pixel team, was doing God’s work by risking his Chromebook Pixel, which charges via USB-C, to test every single USB-C to USB-A cord available to general consumers. One crappy cord, and his $1500 computer would be fried.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away it was used to blow up entire planets. But years later the Empire isn’t what it used to be, and the Death Star is now just the ultimate way to charge your mobile devices as a USB wall adapter.
I just came back from a two-week vacation in Europe. I took loads of gadgets. How did I keep them charged? Why, an unwieldy gadget cornucopia consisting of two AC splitters, a USB wall wart, and an external battery for topping up on the go. If only I’d had the Belkin Travel Rockstar, I could have lightened my load.
The Pebble smartwatch boasts vastly superior battery life to Apple's upcoming wearable, but that doesn't mean you still don't have to regularly keep it charged. So following up on its key-sized smartphone chargers, Nomad is introducing the tiny NomadKey Pebble that includes a magnetic connector for attaching to and…
Prepare to have one those "hey, wait a minute!" moments because it turns out the compact charger that Apple includes with iPhones could actually be doing so much more for you. The similarly-sized ChargeTech not only has folding prongs so it's even easier to transport, it also comes with two side-by-side USB ports that…
There's a new challenger to the throne when it comes to replacement laptop chargers that are considerably smaller than the monstrous power adapters typically included with a notebook. And while the Zolt's compact form factor makes it one of the smallest and lightest, what sets it apart—and ahead—of the competition is…
It should be simple: Charge phone overnight, wake up with enough battery to last the day; repeat. Nope. Try more like: Get home way too late, pass out, press snooze 748 times the next morning and get to work at 9:02 either with no phone at all or one whose battery now has about 20 precarious minutes of juice left…
When you're spending the day with family you probably haven't seen in a year, nothing is more vital to keeping your sanity than your smartphone. And to ensure it's got enough charge to keep you busy on Twitter instead of actually having to talk to your cousins, the diminutive but clever Plan V charger accepts common…
At this point there are just as many portable chargers on the market as there are iPhone cases and Bluetooth speakers combined. But somehow Ventev has done the impossible by creating a portable charger that manages to improve on the near infinite number of designs that came before it, by adding built-in Lightning and…
There are plenty of ways to do the two things that Spira does: Charge your phone and tell you the time. But there's nothing quite like the device that interaction design student Alice Robbiani has built to combine them—her inductive charger turns your iPhone into an interactive wall clock while it charges.
For those us without kids, these Disney-themed USB chargers seem like an adorable way to replace the adapters that came with our smartphones. But to anyone with a toddler roaming the house, exploring every last nook and cranny, they also serve as an engraved invitation to start playing with power outlets.
A portable charger can bring your dead smartphone back to life if you forget to plug it in overnight, but what if you forget to charge the charger too? That's not an issue with the tiny Oivo since it splits in half to accommodate four readily-available AA batteries that have enough charge to completely bring an iPhone…
Even carrying your iPhone's charger everywhere you go doesn't guarantee you'll be able to keep your phone running all day. Sometimes outlets can be hard to find, and for those times the NomadPlus is here to help—transforming your iPhone's standard charger into a portable 1,500 mAh battery for back power on-the-go.
