I got this at the till while buy­ing socks in San Ma­teo for 5 dol­lars.

What is it?

A small prism with a male fold­able USB sock­et on one end, a fe­male USB sock­et, a bat­tery in the mid­dle, a tiny but­ton and tiny led.

How does it work?

When you are plug­ging stuff to charge via US­B, you plug this in the mid­dle, so com­put­er -> back­up bat­tery -> gad­get. That charges the gad­get and the back­up bat­tery. Then you throw it in your pock­et/bag when you leave home.

What does it do?

It lets you recharge rough­ly half a phone's full charge, when you in­evitably run out of bat­tery, so un­less you for­get to charge both things, you'll man­age to sur­vive.

What could be better?

It could come with a mi­cro-usb male in­stead of a USB fe­male, be­cause that means you al­so have to car­ry a ca­ble (no big deal)

What does the button do?

It stop­s/s­tarts the cur­rent flow in­to the gad­get.

What does the LED do?

Tells you if cur­rent is flow­ing (green) or if it's charg­ing (red).

Can you charge anything?

Yes, but 750mAh is enough to keep a Nexus 7 work­ing for about 30 sec­onds ;-) Does a de­cent job on a Kin­dle though!

Are you going to lose it?

Oh yes, the thing is tiny.

Not a bad 5 dol­lar gad­get. How­ev­er, you can find it in Ama­zon for $30 at some places, and that's rob­bery.

I have had a Kin­dle Pa­per­white (with ad­s) for a month. I was a big fan of my pre­vi­ous kindles, spe­cial­ly the 4th-­gen non-­touch one. I pre­ferred it to the Kin­dle Touch be­cause it was lighter, the bezel was shal­low­er, and it had ded­i­cat­ed page-flip­ping but­ton­s.

So, why did I get a Pa­per­white in­stead of the cheap­er 4th gen af­ter I sold my Touch? Be­cause of the dark­ness.

Read­ing is an en­joy­able ac­tiv­i­ty, and I read al­most any­where, in the su­per­mar­ket queue, while hav­ing break­fast, while on the train, and in bed. But in bed, the old­er Kin­dles re­quired me to turn on the light, like a cave­man.

Of course, I could read in my cell­phone (s­mal­l) or in a tablet (heav­ier!) or in a book (a­gain, light­s, cave­man!) So, this was the log­i­cal choice.

It still does­n't have the but­ton­s, and it still has a touch­screen which makes lit­tle sense in a Kin­dle (ex­cept for the key­board) and the bezel is in­ter­me­di­ate. But the light­ing is glo­ri­ous. Sure, it's un­even at the bot­tom. So is the light­ing in a pa­per book while in bed (check it out­). But it's not all that heavy (even with the fan­cy cov­er), and it has a sim­i­lar­ly glo­ri­ous bat­tey life.

The cov­er is re­al­ly great. It feels like leather/rub­ber, it's solid, has a dead­grip on the de­vice, and it turns on/off when you flip it open/­closed, so you don't have to hunt for the tiny but­ton at the bot­tom.

The font se­lec­tion is a wel­come im­prove­men­t, al­though none com­pares well to the de­fault.

Al­so, WTF hap­pened to the au­dio? Why is it gone?

So my ide­al Kin­dle that will nev­er ex­ist would be: a 4th gen with front­light and smart cov­er. A man can al­ways dream.