18,000mAh battery Energizer smartphone canned after only 11 people sing-up to Indiegogo crowdfunder

Big batteries in the Energizer Power Max P18K pop prove unappealing in a bulky smartphone, despite MWA 2019 hype

Energizer's 18,000mAh battery ‘concept' smartphone has been pulled after attracting the backing of just eleven people on its Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign.

The Energizer Power Max P18K Pop, unveiled at MWC 2019 in February, achieved just one per cent of its targeted funding - $15,000 from 11 backers.

The concept device had been put together by French telecoms operator Avenir Telecom, taking advantage of a branding deal with the well-known battery company. It had set a goal of $1.2 million to put the device into production, with the smartphone selling at a basic $599 per device.

It offered a 6.2-inch screen, 6GB of memory, 128GB storage and would have been powered by a Mediatek Helio octa-core processor and Mali GPU. The smartphone would also have a dual-lens front facing camera that would pop-up from the top of the device.

The key unique selling point of the Energizer smartphone, of course, was the battery. Avenir claimed that it could last for up to 50 days without charge on standyby, or could play video continuously for two days.

However, at two centimetres thick the device looked somewhat hefty, and the battery would have taken eight hours to fully charge up.

While the massive battery might have appealed to many potential buyers - even at a retail price of $599 - the equally massive size of the device made it look like a blast from the 1990s.

And, while as bulky as a typical ‘rugged' smartphone, it lacked the kind of rugged features that would appeal to buyers in that niche of the smartphone market.

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