This tiny cube is a solution to all your smartphone problems

I have a little plastic case in my backpack that might as well be called my “emergency phone things” case. Inside, I’ve crammed a micro USB cable, a USB-to-AC power adapter, an SD card or two, a SIM removal pin, and some other goodies. It’s a useful, albeit notably geeky thing to have.

Considering how smartphones have become about as essential as pants in our daily lives, it’s surprising how often we still find ourselves without the necessary bits to make them work. If 100 people on a given street have smartphones, maybe only a few of them are also walking around with a charger cable.

WonderCube, a wee little plastic box developed by a Hong Kong startup, wants to give everyone an “emergency phone things” kit – and make it as convenient to carry around as a ring of keys.

Dat cube

WonderCube looks like a couple of two-dot Legos stacked together. It’s small, it’s plastic, and if you saw it left on a table somewhere, it would hardly warrant a second glance. But then you open it up.

The one-cubic-inch box features a micro-USB charging cable (or Lightning cable for iPhone), as well as a full-size USB cable and an SD card slot. It’s also got a small LED flashlight, a suction-cup side that doubles as a phone stand, and – something I’ve never seen before – an insane 9-volt battery connector that lets your charge your phone with a simple battery.

It’s a pretty impressive assortment of features for a device twice its size. The WonderCube lets Android users expand their phone’s storage with up to 64GB worth of SD card storage (an iPhone-compatible version of this feature is in the works), lets anyone plug their phone into a computer or USB-compatible outlet without the need for extra cables, and allows a user to add about 3.5 hours of extra battery life to their phone simply by cramming a two-dollar 9V battery in there.

Much of WonderCube’s marketing has depicted the device hanging from a keychain – a perfectly good use for the tiny box – but it would also make a good addition to a laptop bag or purse.

WonderCube just finished a successful Indiegogo campaign, raking in more than 5,300 backers and exceeding its funding goal by some 464 percent, and is currently on display at CES in Las Vegas. With the US$327,371 the company raised in its crowdfunding, hopefully it can tackle the product’s Achilles heel: that damned price.

Yesterday, I talked about the Ozmo Smart Cup, a tech-enabled water and coffee cup that can monitor a user’s hydration and caffeine intake. That’s a cool idea! But is a water bottle – even a fancy, techy one – worth eighty bucks? That’s a tough sell.

With WonderCube, we’re back in the arena of, “Oh, that’s cool! And useful! Wait, it costs WHAT?”

Seventy. Dollars. American dollars. Seventy of them.