One of the biggest complaints people have about their cellphones is that, inevitably, the battery loses its ability to hold a charge, and you’re left scrambling more frequently to find an outlet. Avenir Telecom, a European telecommunications provider, tried to save us from that struggle by crowdfunding a new, Energizer-branded phone.
The problem was the phone was comically, insufferably large:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ALwgeCGvlw
The phone, which The Verge referred to as “a battery with a phone in it” was posted on Indiegogo with a price tag of $549 and a plan to raise $1.2 million in total funding. A few days ago, however, the Indiegoogo campaign was pulled after only raising $15,005 in pledges. For those keeping score at home, that’s 99 percent short of its goal.
The phone, called the P18K Pop (named after its 18,000 mAh battery) measured in at about an inch thick, much larger than more popular smartphone models like the iPhone or Samsung Galaxy.
This failure tells us a few things. The first is that people don’t want to cram something that big in their pockets, so slim is still in.
The second, and the more important one for the promo folks, is that battery life is important, but not at the expense of size, style and portability. That’s why things like portable power banks are so popular, and figure to remain that way.
We’ll stick with our thin phones, thank you.
