If there are two concepts that don’t seem to belong together in any way, it’s umbrellas and solar chargers. In reality, you can only need one of those things at a time. But British telecom company Vodafone is, for some reason, putting these two together in a gadget they call the Booster Brolly. The umbrella essentially has three functions: to protect you from rain (or, presumably, the sun), to provide solar charging cells for your phone, and to boost cellular phone signals.

The high-gain antenna is hidden inside the handle of the umbrella, providing an increase in signal for not only the person holding the umbrella but everyone in the immediate area as well. The flexible solar panels on the umbrella’s canopy can connect to your phone or other gadget via a USB plug at the end of the handle…if the sun is out, that is. And since the Booster Brolly is being debuted in England, there doesn’t seem to be a great chance of it seeing very much sun.

The post Booster Brolly is Unlikely Team of Solar Panels + Antenna first appeared on Gajitz.

Whether you’re traveling for business, going on vacation or just headed to work, tangled phone charger cables in your bag are a huge pain. This slick phone charger with a retractable micro USB port would let you charge your phone anywhere you go without worrying about that nasty tangle of cord forming at the bottom of your satchel.

Designed by Japanese designer Jin Kuramoto for Japanese phone accessory company Iida, the Jupitris charger was created to add simplicity and style to the mundane everyday act of charging a cell phone. Available in a variety of colors, the stylish chargers look almost like big pieces of hard candy.

The micro USB port fits most cell phones and the cord easily retracts into the yo-yo-shaped body. All that’s left for you to do is throw the neat, colorful little package into your bag or your pocket and you’re ready to charge up wherever you can find an outlet. The Jupitris is currently available for ¥1,780 (around $23).

The post Sweet Organization: Candy-Colored Retractable Charger first appeared on Gajitz.

We all know the frustration of needing to charge a gadget but also wanting to play with it at the same time. When the only outlet in the room is down near the floor and behind a piece of furniture and the cord isn’t long enough to let you plug and play, you have to make a hard choice. This cute charger concept would make it a little easier to charge your stuff no matter where the outlet is.

The Wool Ball Charger, a concept from Yuchen Liu, is a charger disguised as a ball of yarn. When you need more cord, you unravel as much as you need. When you’re done, it rolls back up again into a ball of yarn that’s infinitely more adorable than the usual ugly charger cord.

It may be the cutest gadget charger ever, but it would definitely be a problem in households with cats. Now that Yuchen has introduced the idea of chargers that look like everyday household objects, there’s no telling where designers will take this concept. Will we see phone chargers that look like strings of fairy lights? Strands of spaghetti? Flower stems?

The post Soft Cell(ular): Inventive Charger Looks Like Knitting Ammo first appeared on Gajitz.

On a bad day, the rush of wind from a train in a subway station can cause endless worries about the state of our hair. On a good day, it can feel almost refreshing. But on any kind of day at all, this totally novel concept could harness the power of that wind and turn it into electricity.

The Charger Sofa concept from designer Tao Ma makes good use of the powerful gusts that rush through subway stations over and over every day. As the wind rushes over the platform, it would spin fans on either end of the Sofa, which would turn to translate kinetic energy into electricity that would be stored in the seat’s internal batteries.

Passengers waiting for trains would then be able to utilize this power by having a seat and plugging in their phones. Several different types of connectors would be hidden among the plants on the back portion of the Charger Sofa, allowing passengers to simply sit down and pull out the charger that fits. According to the designer, the 5-10 minutes that one might spend waiting on the platform is enough time to give a mobile device just the boost that it needs before the next leg of a journey.

The post Powerful Breeze: Subway Seat Tops up Mobile Phones first appeared on Gajitz.

We’ve been known to stomp around and throw a fit at the sight of a dead cell phone or iPod battery. UK telecom giant Orange has seen the connection between dead batteries and moving feet, and they’re making good use of the energy that we all produce by simply walking, dancing, or even stomping.

The boots were developed by Orange and renewable energy company GotWind in an effort to create solutions for keeping people connected while at the Glastonbury Music Festival. The Orange Power Wellies – named after the much-loved Wellington boots seen on just about every foot at outdoor events in the UK – charge up phone batteries with nothing more than the heat from the wearer’s feet. The boots use the Seebeck Effect to transfer temperature changes directly into electricity. The boots use a small battery to store the accumulated energy throughout the day.

At the end of the day, the user can simply plug his handheld device into the boots to charge it up. Don’t count on getting a full battery with this method, though: you’ll have to walk for 12 hours to generate enough juice for just one hour of battery life. But you can speed up the energy generation by making your feet hotter (like by running or dancing) or by walking in colder environments, since it’s the difference between the temperatures on the inside and the outside that generates electricity.

The post Hot Stepping: Boots Use Foot Heat to Charge Mobile Devices first appeared on Gajitz.