UK hardware startup Nifty-which broke Kickstarter records with its Nifty MiniDrive in 2012 announced the first product just before Christmas last year in their new wearable tech line XOO: a smartphone-charging belt designed in collaboration with iconic London fashion house, Casely-Hayford.
Nifty built the XOO Belt to solve a common problem as simply as possible. Other battery chargers exist but come with trade-offs: bulk, inconvenience or only a trickle of extra charge. The XOO Belt does away with such problems: simple to use, always within reach and as light and stylish as, well, a designer belt.
The XOO Belt line includes two collections: Classic XOO and the Casely-Hayford collection, the result of a collaboration between Nifty and world-renowned British fashion duo Joe and Charlie Casely-Hayford. Rather than a simple tech product the XOO Belt is being designed as a wearable that's a pleasure to actually wear and can be customised to suit any wardrobe.
Counting the likes of David Beckham, Tinie Tempah and Florence Welch among their esteemed client list, Casely-Hayford are at the forefront of sartorial innovation and the collaboration is one of the first to see a primarily tech-focused company engage so closely with a luxury fashion house, reflecting the great development of and demand for wearable technology.
Hidden within the XOO Belt are multiple layers of cutting-edge flexible battery, a first of its kind in wearable tech. Ultra safe and unreactive, completely invisible and clocking in at 2,100mAh of power: enough to fully charge an iPhone 6, and then some. The XOO Belt works with both microUSB (Android) and Lightning cable (Apple devices).
Founding CEO of Nifty, Piers Ridyard said:
"We were sick of our phones dying by dinner time. A first-world problem but, nonetheless, a really big pain point. The XOO Belt takes away that pain, whenever you need it and wherever you are. Not just a standard tech product but a really nice product that solves a really big problem really well."
