For Maayan Goyan, an electrical engineering student at Tel-Aviv University in Israel, there are two types of smartphone users: “those who know how to back up their phones, and those who know someone else,” he wrote. Whether or not backing up the precious songs, photos, and calendar events kept on your smartphone seems like rocket science, the process can sometimes be long and tedious. But soon, the most annoying part of your smartphone experience could be over.
Goyan has created bleep, a smartphone charging cable that backs up data just by plugging in your phone. With his Indiegogo campaign, Goyan hopes to find a way to secure smartphone data without the hassle of having to connect a phone to a computer as often.
“Today, with our crucial information stored in our smartphone, back up became a must have,” Goyan wrote on bleep’s Indiegogo page. “My view is that the solution to backing up our phone data has to be on a simple, routine basis. We have to combine phone back up with something we do normally with our phones.”
Bleep’s lime green cable, which will be available for Apple and Android users, comes equipped with a memory chip ranging in 16-64 GB of storage space. The USB cable can simply plug in to the kind of wall adaptor that already comes with iPhones.
Backup begins as soon as a phone is plugged in, syncing with contacts, photos, videos, and other types of media stored on a phone. The data can be password protected, so your personal information will remain safe in the event the cable is stolen. Also, bleep will restore data to a new device in the event your old smartphone suffers from a nasty fall or is stolen. Bleep’s campaign page also points out that the cable is useful for travelers without access to a computer or Wi-Fi, as well as those who are weary of privacy concerns surrounding cloud storage or yearly subscription costs.
While tech companies’ releases of new and updated versions of their smartphones each year, Goyan points out that little has been done to charging cords. “While phones became smartphones, chargers remained ‘just’ chargers,” he wrote.
Bleep will also have an free app for Apple and Android devices that allows the user to control which data gets backed up and choose between three modes for when a phone is plugged in: charge only, back up and charge, and recover. In addition, the app contains an upload-to-cloud function so that data can be moved from bleep’s memory stick and transferred to a different location to make room for future backups.
Though the team must continue to test and develop bleep before it’s distributed, Goyan notes that he and his team have already begun brainstorming for a wireless version of bleep, as well as cables compatible with cameras.
Bleep’s crowdfunding campaign reached its $20,000 goal in just five days, and Goyan and his team have since established a stretch goal of $100,000. Funders can choose from different sponsorship levels that will get them bleep at discounted rates. The campaign ends Oct. 24.
Screenshot via Bleep Charger/YouTube