Battery extenders and portable batteries are nothing new. Charge the juice box, plug it into your notebook, and bam: you have extra battery life. Though it seems like a fairly simple concept, there’s always more than one way to skin a cat, and let’s face it; some ways can be more efficient than others. That’s what Gbatteries is claiming with its BatteryBox portable battery. It looks like any other portable battery, but the company claims that it’s what’s under the hood that sets it apart from the competition.
Over the years, users of portable consumer electronics have just come to accept that battery life gets worse over time. But it doesn’t have to: Gbatteries, which is in the current batch of Y Combinator companies, has come up with a new technology called BatteryOS that provides better performance without battery-life degradation. The first example of this technology is BatteryBox, a rechargeable Lithium-ion battery pack that carries enough power — 50 Whr — to run a MacBook Air for 12 hours, a MacBook Pro for six hours, or to charge eight iPhones. About the size of the typical MacBook power adaptor and weighing less than 9 ounces, BatteryBox packs a punch. In addition to a MagSafe2 cord for charging current-generation MacBooks and MacBook Airs, it also has a port to connect any other devices that charge via USB.
