Wireless chargers are typically not an exciting topic to cover as they differ only in maximum charging Wattage and price. However, WesternDigital/Sandisk have found the intersection between charging and backups, and this could save your data without requiring any effort.
According to Avast, 25%-32% of smartphone users in different countries never backup their phones. Pew Research put the number of people who backup “at least, every once in a while” to 39%-48% depending on location and demographics.
This reality shows that a massive amount of users who don’t back up their phone’s data (contacts, messages, photos, and more) leaving them open to potentially irreversible or catastrophic loss if the phone was lost, stolen, destroyed or corrupted.
However, we know that all users do one thing, almost daily: charge their phone. SanDisk’s iXPAND combines a 10W wireless charger with an automatic backup functionality, giving you a daily backup every time you charge the phone.
iXPAND may be the ultimate backup solution for the backup-lazy user, as no-one is lazy enough to skip charging. This charger will backup (over WIFI) full-resolution photos and videos, and your contacts in its integrated storage.
Sandisk doesn’t explicitly mention if the WiFi connection happens over the local network, or if it uses a WiFi-Direct type of connection for the backup, but either would work fine, and the charging is a sort of trigger that activates the backup.
Conveniently, the charger can (separately) store data for multiple users in a household. It’s a nice touch in a world where too many services assume that there’s only one user. It is also possible to free up spaces on the device after the data has been backed up to the iXPAND. For all of this you need to download the iXpand Charger Mobile Application for iOS or Android.
Of course, there are alternative means to create backups, whether it is only for SMS backups (iOS), backup photos (iOS) or backup with iTunes or iCloud. Similar options exist for Android users too, for SMS, Photos or whole phone backups.
However, we’re talking about users who don’t already utilize these options and might prefer this new alternative. In any case, it’s always exciting to see new products aimed at protecting possibly invaluable data that might never be rebuilt or recovered.
Filed in . Read more about Android, Backups, IFA, IFA 2019, iOS, Sandisk, Storage and Western Digital.