How often do you find yourself in an awkward position because you tried to hold two things at once while taking a selfie?
Or when you try to take a group photo but your hands aren’t long enough to fit everyone into the frame?
Or when your hands are covered with flour and you need to balance your phone awkwardly because your mum wants to video call you?
The guys at Unite Gadgets—Kaii and Aaron—knew that pain, so they decided to do something about it.
The 20-year-old students bonded in university over their passion for business. Over a discussion, “We realised that nowadays, we live in a ‘hustling’ life and everything is moving in a fast pace. We tend to miss our belongings and some other little things.”
That was when it hit them—to utilise tech gadgets and make a platform that allows people to get items that contribute to a more convenient lifestyle.
Their first idea was a tracker for belongings, but they realised there were already many alternatives on the market.
The next product on their platform is the Space Case—a protective case for smartphones with the ability to stick itself onto different kinds of surfaces.
The case uses suction as a method of sticking onto different places. The case itself is already “sticky”, but they include extra accessories that make it even stickier.
You’ve probably heard of other companies with the same product idea so why should they start up another?
The duo found that there aren’t as many companies with this product in Malaysia and the quality of those products was not up to par either. Either that or what was available on the market was too expensive.
Which is why they decided to take on this challenge—to bring a high-grade yet affordable phone case into our market.
They believe that this is part of the process of gaining even better ideas for future creations.
Not everyone’s going to be very excited about it.
There’s always going to be two sides of a coin (unless you’re Harvey Dent from Batman).
It mainly depends on how you normally would use your phone. If you aren’t keen on multitasking, you’d honestly do fine without this gadget.
The case is useful in certain situations and some people would find more use for it than others—but it’s not a necessity.
I’m not much of a selfie-taking person myself but I can definitely see how it’ll benefit me when I’m trying to take a picture with a large group of friends.
Using the Space Case is definitely much cooler than bringing around a selfie stick—often associated with tourists and narcissists.
As part of our tests, we tried to stick it to all sorts of surfaces. It felt very firm on smooth wood, whiteboard, glass, ceramic and plastic.
But then there are also people who wouldn’t feel safe sticking their phones on a wall, with the chance of it falling and getting their precious phones cracked too.
With the “extra sticky” jelly-like accessory, we even got it to stick onto a piece of paper.
So far, it passed everything we threw at it, so we decided to up it a notch. Without the extra accessory, we tried sticking it below the surface of a table, to see what gravity would do.
Nothing happened after 10 minutes, so we decided to push it a bit further by calling the phone to see if vibrations would affect it.
It fell after about 2 minutes of ringing.
We stuck on the extra accessory and it held up despite all the calling.
While it isn’t the most innovative idea out there, it does what it says it’ll do.
The team are currently giving the cases out for free (they’re usually sold at RM90). Prospective customers only need to pay for the shipping fee. The team couldn’t give exact dates, but said the free promo will be ending within these few weeks.
“A lot of friends were impressed when we stick it up for a selfie and showed interest. But due to the price, they chose to turn it down. So, this time we decided to take alternative means,” explained the team.
“Our main objective now is to create awareness as well as establish brand reputation. Fortunately, we successfully received more than RM100,000 funding to kickstart this business.”
Right now, the case is available for both Apple and Samsung users of selected phone models.
The team already has set their sights beyond our country.
“The next big move will be bringing this brand across borders. We will mainly focus in SE Asia’s developing countries and we look forward and have faith in our products to bring convenience to people’s daily lives.”
