We’ve already established how handy battery packs are to have. They’re there to give your phone battery a boost or even a full charge when you’re out and about. No need to be that person sitting on the ground next to a wall outlet in the airport. No need to bring your wall charger along and have to plug your phone into a wall at a party. The battery pack will take care of you when and where you are, as long as you’ve charged it beforehand.

So, what we’ve reviewed this week is the B612Q battery pack from Choetech. How does this battery pack with a weird name stand out from the rest, you ask? Well, it certainly stands out from any battery pack we’ve reviewed yet. It has a Qualcomm Certified Quick Charge 2.0 to charge the B612Q battery 75% faster than standard chargers and is also featured with a quick charge port for devices which support QC 2.0 technology. How rad is that? Faster battery pack charging and faster phone charging if your phone has the capability. Additionally, the B612Q has 10,400 mAH which should offer you a solid couple of phone charges or should serve you and your friend for a night out.

Choetech offers a few different variants of its Quick Charge 2.0 battery packs with different capacities and ports. We reviewed the 10,400 mAH battery with a Lighting port ($29.99). They also offer 15,600 mAH ($31.99) and 20,000 mAH ($38.99) batteries with Lightning ports for only a fraction of the cost more. Additionally, Choetech offers a 10,400 mAH variant with a USB type C port in place of the Lightning port ($31.99). I think Choetech providing Lightning or USB Type C ports in addition to the industry standard micro-USB ports is really great. This removes the need to bring extra cables with you when you’re traveling just so you can charge your battery pack and your phone. Whatever charging cables you use, you can get a Choetech battery pack that can be charged with that cable.

The Choetech B612Q battery pack operates much like any other battery pack out there. It has a button that activates charging mode on the battery and will also activate the LED lights on the front of the device that display the charge of the battery. The case is metal and has a nice feel to it but it seems to attract fingerprints a bit. Last, the battery packs come with two input ports to charge the battery (micro-USB and Ligtning or USB type C) and two output ports (Quick Charge 2.0 and a standard 1 A port). Two devices can be charged at once, but the battery pack does not pass through charge. Last, the battery pack comes with a 12 cm micro-USB cable.

Next we compared charging performance between the B612Q and the Motorola Turbo Charger which also has Quick Charge 2.0 technology on my Nexus 6. As can be seen in the figure to the right, the B612Q quick charge port actually slightly outperformed the stock Nexus 6 Motorola Turbocharger with a charge rate of 1.3% vs. the 1.1% per minute  over 40 minutes on the Moto Turbo. For comparison, I also charged the Nexus 6 on the B612Q 1 Amp port which yielded a charge rate of about 0.5% per minute. So, pretty nifty results for the Choetech B612Q.

So how does the Choetech B612Q stack up against other chargers we’ve reviewed like the TYLT ENERGI 10K and or the Lumsing Grand A1? Compared to the Lumsing Grand A1 13,400 mAH, the Choetech is very similarly sized, lower battery capacity and slightly more expensive, but it has more input ports and quick charge technology. Compared to the TYLT ENERGI 10K, the B612Q is smaller sized, similar battery capacity, has Quick Charge 2.0 and more input ports, but has less charging ports and does not have pass through charging. So overall, I will still probably prefer the TYLT ENERGI 10K for traveling because of the number of ports and pass through charging, but the charging speed of the Choetech B612Q has bumped it up to one of the top chargers out there, especially for the great price.

The Choetech B612Q and other Quick Charge 2.0 battery pack variants can be picked up on Amazon. For a limited time, Choetech has provided the Android and Me readers an exclusive coupon code to drop the already low price of the chargers even lower. The code WHNJTCYR will get you $4 off the B612Q and the code MIFLDQVJ will get you $6 off the B611Q, the 15,600 mAH battery, bringing both totals down to $25.99. If you’re in the market for a battery pack these are definitely worth a look, especially if you have a Quick Charge 2.0 device. I’ve also been told Choetech will soon be releasing a Quick Charge 3.0 battery pack. So keep on the lookout for that.

Let us know if you have any questions about the Choetech battery pack and/or if you’re getting one. What are your favorite battery packs out there and when and how do you use them? Happy New Year everyone!

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Lenovo has just announced the new VIBE S1 Lite at CES 2016 that we wouldn’t mind seeing come to the US market but probably never will.

The VIBE S1 Lite features an all glass design with a 5-inch 1080p IPS display, MediaTek processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage and a 2700mAh battery. All of that is packed into a body just 8.5mm thin for $199.

We certainly aren’t hurting for options in the mid-range Android category in the US, but the VIBE S1 Lite looks like it could be one of the more attractive options. Either way, it’s launching in China soon with other regional markets to follow shortly.

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ZTE has launched a new website today under its Nubia subsidiary brand for selling Nubia products directly to consumers.

The website is currently live with several compatible languages, with European sales slated to go live before expansion to other countries. According to Nubia Co-founder and SVP Felix Fu, there are “at least eight new countries on the horizon.” Right now, Nubia is promoting the Z9, Z9 mini and My Prague, but that product portfolio should expand.

Head on over to Nubia.com now to check it out.

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Lenovo has announced an interesting little accessory today that turns your Windows computer into a control center for your Android device.

Compatible with any Windows 7, 8 and 10 machine, the Lenovo Link is a 32GB flash drive looking device that connects to a USB 3.0 port and then your Android phone to provide a picture-in-picture view of your Android device on your PC. Your phone is completely accessible in this mode, allowing you to use a mouse and keyboard on your phone, drag and drop files, copy and paste text, and more.

The Lenovo Link will be available this March for just $39. Not bad, eh?

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While they aren’t grabbing headlines as frequently as some of the more powerful wearables on the market, Fitbit continues to be the leader in this now crowded space.

At present they are still best known for simpler fitness bands like the Flex, Charge and Charge HR that are geared towards those with solely fitness in mind. Last year’s Fitbit Surge, started to blur the lines between smartwatch and fitness band with a number of notifications possible, but despite recently getting the nod from Obama as his wearable of choice, at $249 the Surge may be flying too close to full smartwatch prices.

Well Fitbit is back today to take another crack at consumers that aren’t ready to take the plunge on a full blown smartwatch, but would like to get a little more out of their fitness wearable.

Enter the Fitbit Blaze, available for pre-order today at fitbit.com and due out in March. The Blaze is launching at a more palatable $200 and maintains the strong fitness first focus, but has upped its game a bit on the smartwatch side.

Fitbit is still definitely ceding the smartwatch game to others and goes out of its way to identify this as a smart fitness watch rather than a smartwatch. The Blaze is the first Fitbit to feature a color screen and it has added custom clock faces. As far as connectivity with your smartphone it can pass through info on calls, texts and calendar updates. You can accept or reject calls from the Blaze and control your music playback. There is not an app store for the Blaze however, so the baked in functionality will be all you get. Time will tell whether this is Fitbit knowing or underestimating the desires of its customer base.

On the fitness front the Blaze has also learned a new trick. Along with the expected step, sleep and heart rate tracking is FitStar.

FitStar offers guided workouts on your Blaze with animated images to show you what to do and exists entirely on the Blaze, so no need to have a smartphone along with you.

If you do have your smartphone along for your workout the Blaze can take advantage of its GPS to give you pinpoint accuracy on the distance of your workout.

Another feature that was added to some existing Fitbit devices (Charge HR and Surge) late last year and found on the Blaze is SmartTrack which automatically identifies what kind of exercise you are doing in order to properly credit you with that exercise rather than reducing everything to steps.

Fitbit also learned from the positive response to the interchangeable bands of the Apple Watch and is offering similar functionality for the Blaze. You can easily swap between steel ($129), leather ($99) or elastomer ($29) straps. I sincerely hope we see more companies cluing into this one in the next year as these devices that are to be worn all day have to be able to morph with our needs.

Battery life is a definite advantage for the Blaze over virtually every smartwatch out there, save for the Pebble line, with 5 days between charges.

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Besides a new lineup of 4K TVs with Google’s built-in Android TV experience, we’re not expecting any real Android news from Sony at CES this year. Sony has announced quite a few Xperia phones, smartwatches and activity trackers at CES over the years, but the rumor mill has been quieter than usual this time around. There’s still a chance that Sony could wow us with an announcement out of left field, but it’s highly doubtful.

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What the Acer Iconia One 8 lacks in specs, it makes up for in price.

Announced today at CES 2016, the Acer Iconia One 8 is an 8-inch tablet featuring a MediaTek quad-core processor, a 5MP rear camera, a 2MP front-facing camera, 1GB DDR3L RAM, 16GB internal storage and a storage expansion slot which supports up to 128GB Micro SD cards. It comes with Android 5.1 and a handful of software tweaks and apps for families.

The kicker? It’s just $99. While it’s certainly not the best tablet money can buy, the price does make it an attractive option for those looking at something the family can use and most likely abuse. The Acer Iconia One 8 launches this February.

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