TechTalk Product Review - WildCharge: Stay in Charge of Your Battery

We first saw the WildCharge in an article from David Pogue at the NY Times (and a video).

This intrigued us to try it for ourselves.

As seen below and on the WildCharge site, the WildCharge comes with a pad adorned with metallic strips. When the phone (with the adapter) is placed on the mat, the 4 small posts on the back of the case make contact with the mat and begin the charge.

Picture from WildCharge Products page.

The mat is smart enough to detect human fingers. No electroshock therapy here. If a person touches multiple strips, the device shuts off.

Our use proved to be ...well, just as expected. We did not run scientific stopwatch tests , but the WildCarge charged our BlackBerry's in around the same time it takes the wall charger. We did not notice any difference in the length of time the phone stayed charged.

As of now, there are a few cases for phones. Motorola Rzrs (some models. see site for details), BlackBerry Curve & Pearl are the only models with cases available now. iPhone cases are planned for the first part of 2009 and WildCharge is also planning to expand their offerings to video games as well.

We'll let you make the call on this. If you already have a case you like or don't want a case in general, this may not be for you. If you are always running out of battery because you forget to plug in your phone, then you may have found your soul mat.

The mat will run you around $65 and each case comes in at around $35