A new device called Swippitt is promising to bring the days of running out of phone battery to an end.
The toaster-sized unit — unveiled at CES 2025 in Las Vegas – contains five batteries that can be near-instantly swapped with a dead one inside your phone’s case. You simply insert your phone into the top of the Swippitt Hub and the device automatically replaces the battery inside the case with a fully charged one.
It means that you don’t need to wait for a phone to charge from a wall socket or carry a power bank with you. Within a couple of seconds, you’ve got a fully charged battery on top of the one already built into the phone.
The device is being targeted at families with multiple phones to charge. An accompanying app can tell parents how much charge their children’s phones hold and when they’ve swapped their battery for a new one, easing anxiety over whether a teenager will run out of battery when they’re away from home, for example.
Compatible Phones
The Swippitt system requires each phone to have a dedicated case (or “Link” as the company calls them) before it can be inserted into the Hub. The company’s CEO Padraic Connolly told me that the company would initially produce cases for iPhone and Samsung Galaxy handsets, with Google Pixel cases also in the pipeline.
Each battery has a capacity of 3,500mAh, which provides between 50% and 90% extra battery capacity for the phone, depending on the phone model it’s paired with. The Hub automatically sorts the batteries in order of their charge percentage so that users don’t get a flat battery swapped back into their case.
The case has a USB-C socket in the base, meaning you can insert a conventional charger and top up both the phone’s battery and the one inside the Swippitt Link if you’re away from home.
The company hopes that the Swippitt devices will become so commonplace that you might eventually visit a friend’s home, your workplace or a venue such as a hotel and be able to switch batteries, even if it’s not your own Swippitt Hub. As all of the batteries are a standard size, only the case differs, they are effectively universal and hot-swappable.
The company will also have a system for replacing and recycling batteries that have reached the end of their useful life. Customers will be sent a Link that can remove the dead batteries from the hub and replace them with a fresh one. The Link can then be sent back to Swippitt, who will recover the battery and send it for recycling.
Swippitt Price And Availability
Perhaps the biggest downside of the Swippit is its price. The Swippit Hub will cost $450, although the company is running a pre-order discount system that knocks $100 off the price in January. Each Link, including a battery, will cost $125.
The device will soon be available for pre-order from the Swippitt website and is expected to start shipping in June. It’s available in two colors: black and white.
