Company hits crowdfunding target for iPhone case with built-in Android phone

By admin On Mar 14, 2017

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Israeli company ESTI has raised money on Kickstarter to create an iPhone case that integrates an Android phone. The ‘cover’ has a 5″ OLED screen and a MediaTek Helio P20 soc.

The creators call the iPhone case ‘Eye’ and say they are making versions for the iPhone 6, 6s and 7 and the Plus versions thereof. There should also be support for new iPhones as soon as they come out. The cover has almost all the hardware of an Android smartphone, but a speaker and microphone are missing.

According to the creators of the Kickstarter project, the case can communicate with the iPhone via the Lightning port. They also promise a speed of 130MB/s. Speech and sound must be able to be forwarded via the connection. The developers behind the project say they are making their own app for this.

There will be versions of the case with or without 4G connectivity. The variant that does have space for two SIM cards. According to the Kickstarter page, there will be a MediaTek Helio P20 soc in the device, a soc with eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores and a Mali-T880 MP2 GPU. There is 3GB lpddr3 ram and 16GB storage space. This can be expanded with a micro SD card.

The case for the iPhone 6, 6s and 7 will weigh 90 grams and measure 142×86,9,8×13.1mm. The model for the Plus versions of the iPhones weighs 98 grams and has dimensions of 162.5×80.5×13.3mm. There is a 3.5mm jack in the case, which should be able to be used to listen to music stored on the iPhone.

The Eye contains a 2800mAh battery, which can be charged wirelessly via the qi standard. This battery is used to power the ‘case’, but also to power the iPhone. The makers say that the device will be delivered with Android 7.1 and will provide updates for two years.

Ultimately, the Eye should go on sale for $189 without cellular support and $229 with 4G support. The creators have raised more than $136,000 through the Kickstarter campaign. Their minimum goal was $95,000, although there are also stretch goals of up to $15 million. The latter goal should enable triple boot with Ubuntu OS and Windows 10 Mobile.

The makers say they have been working on the development of Eye for years and want to deliver the products to the backers of the project in September of this year. In films they show prototypes that, according to the developers, look the same as the final product, but work ‘in a different way’.