With the increased functionality of the smartphone nowadays, an external powerbank is essential to juice up your device when it is running dry. However, Fonebud Essential Plus was not just a simple powerbank, it packs with alot more feature that you would never expect.
Apart from charging your smartphone during critical moment, it also can act as torchlight to luminates your environment when in total darkness. Besides, it also allow you to take selfie and you can even pick up call from your friends right on this powerbank! This is not an April Fool joke (since April Fool was so yesterday).
The Fonebud Essential Plus that comes with selfie function, alarm trigger and call receiver works via app communication with Bluetooth technology. The app supports both iOS and Android system and has no compatibility issue.
Fonebud is a national product under collaboration betweem Sun-u corporation and Pensonic Malaysia.
Unboxing
The Fonebud Essential Plus is available in gold, orange, green and gray colour. Within the box, the Fonebud Essential Plus comes with a case, microUSB charging adapter, production information and warranty card.
Specification:-
- 5000mAh Li-Po battery
- 500 recharge cycle life
- 30 hours talk time
- 100 hours standby
- DC 5V, 1A output
- DC 5V, 2A output
Design
Overall, this powerbank does appear similar as optical mice which fits the ergonomic design of palm. The Fonebud was mainly made up of plastic with a curved design in the exterior. There is a torch located in the front of the powerbank while the charging output and input port are located on the bottom part of the device. There is also 4 display indicator which indicates the remaining battery level on the Fonebud. Full lights on indicates full charged device, while decrease of battery level is indicates by the fewer amount of light displayed on the indicator.
Function
1. Phone charging
Since people nowadays tends to rely on smartphone more, 2000mAh battery level is no longer suffice to last a day. Thus, powerbank is then put into use to power up the device wherever they bring.
Let’ see how does it charge! (For reference only)
| Phone model | Charging rate (%) | |
| 15 minutes | 30 minutes | |
| Huawei Ascend Mate 7 (4100mAh) | 3 | 5 |
| Xiaomi Redmi 1S (2050mAh) | 2 | 10 |
| Oppo R5 (2000mAh) | 13 | 20 |
| Apple iPhone 5s (1560mAh) | 11 | 21 |
In short, the charging speed of the Fonebud Essential Plus is relative slow compared to some other powerbank on the market out there. Looks like there is some more room for improvement for their charging output!
2. Call receving function
The Fonebud Essential Plus utilizes Bluetooth technology for call pick up function. This function is ideal for those who communicates their friend for a very long period of time. This is because prolonged phone call can cause heat build up on the smartphone, and thus heating up the cheek of the user. By utilizing the Fonebud Essential Plus as call receiver, user can reduce the possibility of heat build up on the smartphone and reduce the exposure to radio waves emitted from smartphones.
When the user receives an incoming call, the large button above will appear blue as shown in above. The call quality of this device is clear and crisp. If you worried about the battery consumption of bluetooth call with this device, each call only consumes takes up insignificant amount of battery in your smartphone and powerbank.
3. Selfie
After installing the Fonebud App in Google Play Store and Apple App Store, we started up the app take some sample selfies pictures. The Fonebud powerbank only supports the official Fonebud app available in both market. However, we were very disappointed with the image taken from the app. The interface appear too simpistic with just a zoom button and camera switch key. Long pressing the camera shutter will initiates autofocus in the app to take photo. The photo taken from this app is terrible due to suffer in angle issue.
Here are some samples photo taken from the app (shown in top) and from the stock camera (shown in bottom)
4. Alarm/ Alert system
The Fonebud Essential Plus application comes with alert features which detects the distance between smartphone and the powerbank. After pairing the the smartphone, taking the cellphone above 25 meter will trigger the alarm in the powerbank which can alert the user.
5. Torch
As promised by the device, this powerbank can turned into torch during black out period. Nothing ‘flashy’ here (no pun intended)
Conclusion
The Fonebud Essential Plus is currently priced at RM229 which is fairly expensive for a 5000mAh battery. However, the addition of several feature such as voice dialing and smart alert feature is certain useful for some user. The Fonebud application has to make some madeover to improve the interface and the image quality taken from the app. Lastly, we hope that Fonebud will bring us more exciting national products in the future!
