Flintu’s SideKick is an everyday carry which could save you and your smartphone

As Australia’s startup ecosystem experiences a resurgence, its hardware startups are getting in on the act. Despite Sydney being around the same flight time from Shenzhen (in China, the hardware capital of the world), as San Francisco, it’s handily in the same time zone. This means Australia’s hardware startups are leveraging that advantage more and more – and suffering less jet lag than their US cousins.

One new hardware startup to emerge recently has been Flintu.

The founder Evan Stuart and Luke Trevitt came up with the idea for their first product, the Sidekick, when their phones died during a backpacking holiday. They hacked together a solution with some wires and normal batteries and later realized lots of other people could use a product which could get them out of a serious bind.

The resulting Sidekick was pocket-sized and able to use the power from external batteries, size AA, C or D.

That was the first version. But the new version is even more useful. They’ve now added a built-in Li-on booster cell, capable of adding 2 hours of charge.

And the functions don’t end there. The Sidekick also acts as an external storage where you can store up to 64G of data on the device.

So far the startup has raised over $75,000 on Kickstarter. The Sidekick is available as $49 for an 8G Sidekick, $59 for a 16G, $69 for 32G, $99 for 64G or $129 for a 128GB.