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Need Juice? This Phone Charger Fits In Your Wallet

This article is more than 10 years old.

The Pitch: The ChargeCard is a super-slim USB phone charger that can fit in a wallet as easy as a credit card. The product was funded on Kickstarter, and was recently sold on the shopping site Grand St.

The Verdict: Few phones have the juice to last through an entire day of even moderate usage. In fact, I'd put down money that either you or somebody you know carries a phone charger with them everywhere they go (you know: just in case). The ChargeCard purports to offer an always-with-you charger that takes up no more space than a credit card.

"But what about backup batteries?" the chronically depleted might ask. Sure, those things work great for some folks, but you still need a bag (or a hefty pocket at the very least) to tote them around. And while battery cases such as those made by Mophie may offer a slightly more elegant solution, they can be a bit bulky for some folks. Not this bad boy: It really does slip into a wallet. And if you have a maleable phone case, there's a chance it could even fit in between the back of your phone and the case itself.

After a few weeks of giving this thing a go, I can say that it really does make good on its simple promise: It charges your phone (there are different versions for the iPhone 5, older iPhones, and micro-USB-charged phones), and does so without taking up much space. Simple.

Sure, I had had some knocks with the product: Some folks might find the plastic construction to feel a bit cheap, or lament the fact that you still need to find a USB port to plug into (meaning it won't work with an AC wall outlet without an additional attachment). And while I found myself wishing the strip-shaped USB cord was a bit longer, I don't see anyway they could have made it so without ruining the product's wallet-sized design. That's the thing with making something portable above all else: There's gonna be compromises. And as long as they don't mess with the product's base functionality (none of these did), I'm fine with that.

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Seth Porges is a writer and co-creator of Cloth for iOS. For more fun,  follow Seth on Twitter at @sethporges, or subscribe to him on Facebook or Google+