Lenovo Releases a Phone That Can Charge Your Phone
The battery on the Lenovo S860 is special. It will give you 24 hours of talk time on a charge, easily beating the Galaxy S5’s 21 hours of talk time and the iPhone 5s’s 10 hours of talk time.
That’s great. But even better? The S860’s battery is so powerful that it can actually charge other phones.
That’s right. It’s like a wall unit. If your phone is dead, or needs some juice, just plug your phone’s USB cable into the S860. Then hook up the charging end to your phone, and the Lenovo will transfer its own power to yours. No wall socket needed.
Pretty cool, no?
The technology isn’t brand new. Chinese manufacturer Huawei unveiled a smartphone that could also charge other phones last month. That phone, the Ascend Mate 2 4G, measured in at a giant 6.1 inches, however. At 5.3 inches, the new power-giving Lenovo phone might reasonably fit in most human hands.
Be forewarned, however, that the charging doesn’t seem to work on every phone, at least in my brief time with it. The Nokia Lumia I’m carrying around wouldn’t accept the charge, but a Lenovo rep pulled out a Motorola Moto X, plugged a USB cord connected to the S860’s own microUSB slot into that device, and it started charging.
The Lenovo rep couldn’t tell me why it wouldn’t charge my Lumia phone. But that might be an indication that there are still kinks to work out with this transfer-of-power function.
There’s no indication on the Lenovo that it’s giving up its charge, but the other device will let you know that it’s getting a fill-up.
It’s not the sexiest phone feature in the world, not something you drop your current device and rush out to the store for. But it’s the sort of thing I’d like to see a lot more of on new devices — at least until every phone has a battery as massive as the S860’s.
The phone is due out in June, priced at $349. In the meantime, the Lenovo handset has plenty of juice to spare.
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