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From the Makers of SmartCarte, the ChargeCarte

November 29, 2007 at 9:30 AM | 5 Comments

Seasoned travelers and frequent flyers are familiar with the SmarteCarte brand which offers, for a fee, a metal cart for you to tug your luggage around the airport. (The cart itself sadly doesn't come with that extra "e".) Honestly, we'd rather haul our luggage manually than pay a fee for a cart that is typically free in places like European airports and supermarkets.

Nevertheless, SmarteCarte has designed another way to get money out of beleaguered travelers with their ChargeCarte.

We spotted this machine in the Las Vegas airport the other week. The way it works is that you plug your cellphone (any brand), iPod or MP3 player into the machine and it will rapidly charge it for 30 minutes for $3 while you wait out the delays at the gate. The machine also locks your cellphone/MP3 player into its slot so it can't be stolen. [Ed. Note: Strike that. You have to watch your own phone as there are no locks. Sorry for getting your hopes up.]

Begrudgingly we kinda like this idea simply because we have traveled so many times without our phone chargers. Now if only they had a slot for digital cameras, too; we'd never have to stress about trying to find an obscure camera battery on the streets of Amsterdam again.

Related Stories:
· ChargeCarte [Official Site]
· Airports coverage [Jaunted]

Where: Las Vegas, nv, United States

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Author Photo: juliana by juliana

5 Comments

Return to » From the Makers of SmartCarte, the ChargeCarte

  1. egw

    Jaunted Editor
    November 29, 2007 at 10:05 AM




    No way!

    When I first saw these I thought they looked like a rip-off, but that is pretty cheap... I still wish airports had more outlets, though, as the owner of a laptop with 30 seconds of battery power.

  1. Alex Sung

    Jaunted Member
    November 29, 2007 at 2:36 PM




    how secure

    Is this thing - anybody tried it?  Like does your cellphone just unlock after 30 minutes, and if you aren't there, sucks to be you?

  1. juliana

    Jaunted Contributing Editor
    November 29, 2007 at 2:56 PM




    watch your phone

    i was wrong. i thought these were locked in. all those cords must have confused me. my sincere apologies.

    so basically you have to watch your phone to make sure that no one steals it. Here is a video to demonstrate how it works (you will need audio). notice the man hunkering down at a table with a book while he waits.

  1. pbb

    Jaunted Member
    November 29, 2007 at 3:09 PM




    O. M. G.

    That video is hilarious. Looks like it was shot in 1995... Like, "Have you heard of cell phones? They're gonna be huge."

  1. amandak

    Jaunted Member
    November 29, 2007 at 11:17 PM




    but over in Japan ...

    I remember seeing a similar set up in a few places in Japan but you could plug anything in to charge and lock it into a kind of locker with a transparent door. Perhaps it cost a lot more though :-)

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