Universal-Fit Chargemander: 1 Year in the making
Heya Trainers happy holidays to you!
Along the Universal Chargemander journey there have been many highs and lows and we honestly were not sure if we would be able to pull it off. There are NO universal fitting battery cases on the market today. This is because they are damn hard to make. In order to make one, we had to go through dozens of iterations, dozens of factories and bring in several engineers on to help GGTR full time on just this project.
But today I'm proud to announce we did it!
Enough talking, let me show you what I'm talking about:
As we've learned the hard way - you can never do enough testing...
Drop Testing
Charging Testing 1
Charging Testing 2
Magnet Testing
But we have also learned the hard way that we can't solely rely on the factory testing... that's why we created the GGTR Chargemander Backer Beta Tester Program...
Kickstarter Backer Grant got his hands on his Universal Chargemander last week:
Beta Tester Video 1
Beta Tester Video 2
Grant has promised to send us more videos soon and we are waiting for our other beta testers to send videos as well.
So... the Universal Chargemander is finally here. It's real. It's happening. Now on to the logistics...
We are finishing up production and assembly of the remaining Universal Chargemanders right now. We will be shipping them ASAP directly to you from China to save time.
We are still on pace to ship by Christmas. Our estimated ship date is December 25th. Unfortunately, since we won't be shipping until Christmas this means that the Chargemanders won't arrive until after Christmas, unless you live in China.
Realistically, with the holidays and shipping times being slower than normal, you probably won't have your Universal Chargemander in hand until January.
We are truly sorry about this. We know you've waited a very very VERY long time and that it sucks to not at least get it by Christmas. But we learned the hard way that rushing results in design and quality issues and we wanted very much to provide you with an end product that will work great that you will be very happy with.
One more bit of bad news: at this point, we have tested the Universal Chargemander with almost every phone possible and there are some phones that just won't work with the Universal. Here are the phones that will not work:
- Alcatel One Touch
- Blackberry Classic
- Droid Maxx
- Droid Turbo (MAYBE STILL TESTING)
- LG G2
- LG Magna
- Moto X (2nd Gen)
- Nexus 5
- Samsung Galaxy S4
- Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
- Samsung Galaxy A5
- Samsung Galaxy Core Prime
- Samsung Galaxy Express 3
- Samsung Galaxy J3 Emerge (MAYBE STILL TESTING)
- Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini
- Sony Xperia Z1 Compact
- Sony Xperia Z5 Compact
- Xiaomi Mi 4
If you are one of the unlucky 40 backers that have one of these phones we are so sorry we couldn't make the Universal fit your phone. Your phone may still work fine with the Universal, but it won't be the safe snug fit like the other phone models.
Hopefully many of you who had these phones have now upgraded to a newer phone all of which the Universal will work with, but if you do still have any of these older phones still, please email hello@gogotoro.com so we can discuss options with you - we can send you two Gamer Series Power Banks instead of the Universal if you'd like.
International Backers
On another note, all international Chargemanders are shipping out now as well. There have been many delays on the international front with finding a shipping partner to ship batteries internationally but we have solutions in place now so if you are an international backer with a phone model that has already been shipped then yours is shipping any day and if you are an international Universal backer then yours will ship at the same time as everyone else's.
November Backer of the Month
Congrats to sebasskywalker on being suppperrr awesome and posting this awesome picture with your Chargemander:
.
Please reach out to us to claim your prize!
That's all for now folks.
Happy Holidays to you and your loved ones from everyone at GGTR. We're incredibly grateful to have awesome passionate trainers like you all that have stuck with us this amazing journey <3