HOUSTON – You're sending emails, watching videos and making calls all from your cellphone. It's a real bummer when your battery dies.
The Atomic Charge Wallet claims to double your battery capacity. The wallet is made of aluminum. It clicks open to reveal an accordion file for your credit cards and cash.
"Would you carry that?" consumer expert Amy Davis asked her male colleagues in the Channel 2 newsroom.
"I would carry that," answered reporter Bill Spencer. "For one thing, it's smaller, more protective."
Spencer's leather wallet is stuffed to about twice the size of the Atomic Charge Wallet.
"Look at how thick it is," he said as he showed Davis his wallet.
"But you probably couldn't fit all of your stuff in there," Davis said.
"I'd have to economize, which would be good for me," Spencer said.
"It might feel a little clunky in my pants," said producer Ruben Hidalgo. "But I definitely see the use for it."
The Atomic Charge Wallet commercial makes all sorts of claims like it protects your cards from RFID theft and that it can survive drops and can even be run over by a bicycle and survive. But we wanted to know two things: How much can the wallet hold? And how well can it charge a phone?
Davis filled it with 6 cards and some cash and discovered it was hard to close, but it did snap. Eight cards was the wallet's maximum capacity.
Once her phone battery was at 50 percent, Davis connected the Atomic Charge Wallet to her Samsung 7 with the mini USB cable that came with the product. Her battery began charging; but after an hour and 50 minutes, the wallet simply stopped charging and left her cell battery at only 58 percent.
You can find the Atomic Charge Wallet for about $20 online, but for that price you should probably just invest in a larger, more reliable portable battery that you can carry with you and charge your phone when needed.
Either way, you will have to remember to charge the wallet or the portable battery because they will drain, too.
