Cellphone battery recharging vending machine

We've all been there — somewhere with a dwindling cellphone battery, and we've forgotten our charger. Galéa Technologies is offering us a solution in the Cogib, a giant cylinder with four doors and a touchscreen that promises to charge the vast majority of the world's cellphones (and a large number of other devices, besides) in about 20 minutes. The Cogib is being marketed to shopping malls, airports and other public spaces as a one-stop vending machine solution for cellphone charging. The four doors in the unit contain four secure vaults with a wide variety of power leads, rising out of the unit when called upon by a customer by inputting their mobile model number via the touch screen. The user connects the phone, the unit retracts and the door locks, only to be reopened by a four digit code chosen by the user. Galéa expects users will be willing to pay about $3 per charge to have their phones swallowed and re-energized, which we hope will be enough to cover the extra personnel time required when someone inevitably forgets the code they entered.

[Thanks, Brian]