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Modular phones are cool, but if you aren’t keen on drifting away from your comfort picks from the big OEMs to give it a go in the early days, perhaps a case is what you need to satisfy your appetite as the technology matures. That’s what the i-Blades Smartcase is looking to do.
This case is smart in that you can attach modular components to it in order to enhance smartphone functionality. The “blades,” as they’re called, snap on easily thanks to strong magnets, and with a smart contact connector the case will determine what it is and properly enable its intended functionality. This could be an extra battery or more storage, and there are dreams of things like mobile payments and health-focused use cases.
Blades can be stacked, so you can have multiple batteries or storage on at a time. This won’t be the prettiest of things, of course, but if you need to extend battery for 5 continuous days you certainly can do that.
The company has plans to launch this thing for the Samsung Galaxy S4 and Samsung Galaxy S6 to start, though they note they’re open (and planning) to expand to many other smartphones down the line.
Want one? The cheapest IndieGoGo pledge you can make to get the product once it’s ready is a $49 early bird special, though this is only available to the first 50 people, and it doesn’t come with any extra blades. The normal price for the case itself is $75, a case + battery blade (2,600mAh) combo goes for $99, and the case + memory blade (64GB) combo goes for $109, and there’s a bundle with one of each blade for $125.
The company expects to ship starting May 2016, though it’s always wise to curb your expectations in case any unforeseen delays pop up. The project is sitting at just over $3,000 pledged toward a $30,000 goal as of the time of this writing, and with another 33 days to go there should be plenty of time for them to rack up the dough if the interest and demand are there. Head here if you don’t want to miss out.
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