This is not the usual, slightly sceptical blog that sees the hype but not the reality. This time, for a change, its real, virtually no hype involved but a big reality. That’s what makes the understated announcement by Banana.com so impressive.
Everyone has heard of Apple as an IT giant and everyone has heard of Orange as a formidable mobile telecoms company, but how many have heard of Banana as an apps company? Not many? That’s because it only launched at the beginning of April 2015. Yet its main product is surely one of the most revolutionary inventions that could turn the IT world upside down.
Banana has invented a way to convert bits into bats, where bats are to batteries what bits are to bandwidth. No more plug in problems, finding a socket, losing the connection cord, finding incompatible devices, etc. With bits into bats, wireless battery recharging finally moves out of the R&D labs and into the shops. It won’t be cheap. A Banana app will cost close to $1,000, but the convenience is a game changer. Already Apple has an agreement to place a Banana into its watches, solving its major hurdle of running for only a few hours when using other apps such as health apps and video apps. It is anticipated that Orange too will add the Banana to its high end smartphones, although at a premium price. BlackBerry likewise is reported to be in negotiations.
Silicon Valley Venture capitalist LowHangingFruit (LHF), headed incidentally by the rather appropriately named Berry Gato, has sunk many millions of dollars into Banana. Their previous big investment was in UFOs-among-us.com that has been a sensational hit in the US, sponsored by Fox News. What makes Banana so appealing, besides the obvious, is that it offers what it calls three “peels”. The first peel of the Banana app is remote battery recharging. The second peel is what it calls its “float” which is a way to transfer the excess battery power stored in the phone to another device that might be running short. Tethering in other words. The third peel is aptly called “trifle”, an app that allows other apps to run on half-power to save battery time.
It is rare that such a game changer should be launched with so little fanfare, yet it is precisely its promise to radically alter the way the entire industry designs its products that does away with the need to advertise. Word of mouth will be sufficient. Just as “empty vessels make the most noise” as the saying goes, so real substantive scientific and technological advances need little publicity.
The app will be available from 1st April.
