Everpurse mobile charger. Photo: Everpurse
Liz Salcedo, who helped other people with their problems, had a problem of her own with her cell phone draining out of power by 2 p.m. on most days.
So her husband decided to lend a hand
and bought her a number of third-party mobile chargers and together they rigged a system to charge her phone in her purse, so that she didn't have to look for AC outlets wherever she went.
"We made modifications to it and it worked fairly well," ABC News quoted Salcedo as saying.
"Friends started wanting me to make one for them," she said.
So she did. Together with her husband and now-business-partner, Dan, she created Everpurse, a bag that has a built-in battery charger.
The small bag, which is supposed to fit inside a larger purse or laptop bag, has a built-in charging pocket people can drop their phone in the bag and it "automatically connects to the charger via gravity," Salcedo said.
Salcedo didn't go into detail on how the phone connects; as the patent is still pending, she said.
A battery in the bag charges the phone, and a wireless pad charges the battery in the bag. The bag uses Qi wireless charging standard, which is the same technology in Nokia's new Lumia 820 and 920.
"I think wireless charging is where we are headed.
"I wanted to do something that cut down on the wires," she said.
Behind the bag's inside lining are the inductive receiver and battery and wires or the battery cannot be seen; the company teamed up with two Chicago designers to craft the bags so that they looked non-technical.