Znaps Kickstarter draws to a close with nearly 2,500% of funding target

Any MacBook owner will tell you that one of the “nice to have” features of the laptop is the MagSafe charging cable, which magnetically clicks into place when you put the cable and charging port near each other. It seldom gets mentioned in reviews, partly because Apple introduced the feature nearly a decade ago, and partly because – well, who devotes great time to thinking about charging cables?

Well, Kickstarter has well and truly proved that people think about them. Znaps aims to emulate the joy of the MagSafe charger for any smartphone with either a Lightning port (iPhone 5s and up) or micro-USB (almost everything else).

Comprising of two parts – the cable adapter and the “plug” that sits in the phone’s charging port – Znaps has already smashed its funding target several times over. It has raised CAD$2,945,318 (£1.4 million) of its CAD$120,000 (around £60,000) goal, and it still has a few hours left to run. As a result of this success, its creators have already hit a number of stretch goals including additional colours, a second charging light, Apple MFi certification and USB Type-C support.

You may wonder why they didn’t just build a cable, rather than breaking it into a cord and an adapter. So did some of the commenters on the Kickstarter, and the designers claim it’s down to patent law. In short, concerned about violating Apple’s patent, they decided to play it safe by breaking the charger into two parts.

So, for non-MacBook owners, what’s the fuss about? Well, with laptops, tripping on the lead results in a clean removal of the cable, without dragging the MacBook to the floor or damaging the charging port. Znaps suggests in its Kickstarter page that the same result will apply here, but with something as light as a mobile phone, we’ll have to wait and see.

Micro-USB users will delight in the fact that it’s reversible, meaning no more fiddling to get the cable the right way up, although iPhone users will be familiar with this kind of luxury. It plugs the charging port against water damage (be warned, though, that unless your phone is water-resistant like the Samsung Galaxy S5 or Sony Xperia Z3, it will likely have other vulnerable points) and also has a light to indicate its charging status. Perhaps best of all, its creators promise its svelte size means that it’s compatible with any existing case.

You can back Znaps for a few more hours on Kickstarter, with a single cable and adapter costing $11 (around £7), with shipping expected to begin in November this year.