Samsung’s clever new cable will charge three gadgets at once

By Andy Boxall Published August 22, 2014

samsung multi charging wall charger cable — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Samsung is about to take the pain out of owning too many gadgets, and not having enough power outlets, by releasing a USB charging cable which splits into three micro USB connections at one end. This way, you can use a single charger, but still keep three different devices topped up with power at the same time.

It’s called the Multi-Charging Wall Charger, and it has recently shown up as “coming soon” on Samsung’s product pages. While it sounds like the answer to a common problem, there is an obvious drawback to such a handy cable, that it doesn’t increase the amount of power delivered by the charger, and therefore will take much longer to charge up your hardware.

Related: Ten battery tech breakthroughs

Cleverly, Samsung has thought about this, and the charging cable knows how many devices are plugged in, then spreads the available amount of juice evenly. If you’re trying to charge two smartphones and a tablet, then it won’t happen very quickly, but if it’s one phone and two smaller accessories – Samsung lists a smartwatch and a Bluetooth earpiece as an example – then the timing should be more reasonable.

Samsung clearly intends the cable to be used as a trickle charger for overnight use, when a quick charge isn’t necessary. Of course, if you plug just one device in, it’ll charge up as usual. We can also see the cable will be good for using when away from home.

The cable is available for back order through Samsung’s website, but no release date has been provided. It’ll cost you $40 though, which sounds expensive for a single cable, but not quite so bad if you think of it as three cables.

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Senior Mobile Writer

Andy is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends, where he concentrates on mobile technology, a subject he has written about for…

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