Media Enquiries
Any media enquiries can be made to or by calling .
Product Images
Click here to download a zip file containing a selection Zap&Go product images.
Zap&Go logo
Click here to download the Zap&Go logo
From Stephen Voller C.Eng, founder and inventor of Zap&Go:
The Zap&Go is the gadget that everyone wants because it means you no longer have to sit around on floors by plug sockets waiting for your phone to charge. It charges in just 5 minutes. See the video at www.zapgocharger.com
The product features a graphene supercapacitor and new type of power supply. The company is based at Oxford University in the UK.
I invented the product because when I travelled on business, I have seen many people sat down by wall plugs trying to charge their phones. This happens frequently at airports, on trains, at conference venues and events whenever people cluster together. Almost every business person I have spoken to has experienced the nightmare of a low-battery when you need the phone the most.
Of course this is now more important than ever, because new security regulations at airports mean that you must power-up your device.
As you know, the trend in smart phone design is to make the products bigger, for example the excellent new Apple iPhone 6 and the Samsung Galaxy. This has the advantage of providing more space inside the device for a bigger battery, so the ‘talk-time’ or length of time you can use the phone before the battery goes flat increases. Unfortunately so does the battery recharge time. My iPhone 5s takes 2.4 hours to recharge, I estimate the iPhone 6 will take about 4 hours to recharge.
While people have evolved strategies to keep their phone charged, this is often stressful and time consuming. It also means carrying a whole bunch of cables and clutter. The lithium based batteries inside charge slowly, so it can take 2-4 hours to recharge a smart phone. So in 2013 I founded Zapgocharger Ltd, to build a new type of charger specifically for the business traveller. We have licensed intellectual property (IP) from Oxford University in the UK, and have also developed unique IP of our own.
Existing charger products charge slowly
The reason existing charger products don’t alleviate the problem, is because most use the same lithium battery based batteries as your phone and also recharge slowly. I bought a whole bunch of these battery based chargers over the years, which work on the idea of providing a bigger battery. These bigger batteries are sometimes built into a case design, which can make the phone heavy and bulky, or in an external charger. I found the external chargers more convenient, but I had to remember to keep them charged, and if I didn’t, they actually lengthened the wait time by the plug. My iPhone 5s takes 2.4 hours to recharge, if I used an external charger with a bigger battery (say 3,000mAh) this took a further 3 hours to recharge. This was OK when I was in the office, but no good at all when I was travelling.
Supercapacitors charge quickly
By contrast supercapacitors are now available the charge very fast. In fact they can take in enough energy to fully recharge an iPhone for example in seconds. So my idea was to use a supercapacitor instead of a battery to recharge a phone.
So why hasn’t this been done before?
Existing supercapacitors are made from double wound aluminium foils, and a supercapacitor sufficient to fully recharge an iPhone battery would be the size of a soda can and weigh about 0.5kg or one pound (1lb). This is too bulky and heavy to package into a phone charger.
We are replacing the aluminium, with a new advanced carbon material called graphene. The graphene is orders of magnitude more conductive than aluminium and so the foils inside the capacitor can be made thinner and lighter. This means that our new graphene supercapacitors are now small, light and low-cost enough to be made into a competitively priced phone charger.
Also we had to develop a new type of power supply because to get enough power into the charger in a few minutes wouldn’t work with existing power supplies.
Zap&Go Charger
The Zap&Go Charger is designed to charge any type of phone or tablet that has a standard 5v USB (Universal Serial Bus) port. This includes all of the major manufacturers including Apple, Amazon Kindle, HP, HTC, LG, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, Sony, etc.
The Zap&Go Charger is available with all international power plugs, and works very simply: you find a power socket and plug in. The lights on the Zap&Go charger will illuminate as it takes in 1,500mAh of charge into the graphene supercapacitor. This is enough to charge an iPhone 5 from flat to 100%, an iPhone 6 or Samsung Galaxy 5 to 75%, or an iPad Air to 50%. This process will take upto 5 minutes, but will be less if your Zap&Go 5 minute charger is partially charged already.
When the Zap&Go 5 minute charger is fully charged you will hear a confirmation sound. At this point you have two choices. You can either unplug or stay plugged in:
unplug your Zap&Go 5 minute charger and run for your flight or train, and your phone or tablet will continue to charge normally, even though you are no longer plugged in
stay plugged in and your Zap&Go 5 minute charger will act as a universal phone or tablet adaptor while you can remain sat by the plug.
