Interview With idime's Founder Steve - Increasing The IPhone Storage A Bit Differently

Just a few days back, we informed you regarding a startup which is going to help you increase the Storage of your IPhone by an easy and affordable product. Their Kickstarter is currently live right now and they have crossed more than $30,000 currently and still going.

We thought to reach out with their founder to let our lovely readers know about himself, his company, vision as well as a bit of insider information idime. So without further ado, below is the interview between us and the founder:

TCD: Hey Steve, Tell us a little about yourself and your company.

Steve: Hi, my name is Steve and I am the Founder and CEO of idime. I have been developing firmwares since 2000 and started programming iOS application when iPhone first came out to the market. Looking back at it, I have been in engineering for more than 15 years now.

For the last decade, I have been involved in the developments of many consumer electronic products that have been released into market under different names of companies. Through this time, I have been involved in many different projects and met current team engineers of idime. Rebranded to idime from Bench Soft in 2016, we are a startup founded in year 2014.
We have a design team that adds aesthetic to the idea, engineers that develop firmware, mobile application team that creates user friendly UX and finally marketing team that translates the products into something that end users can understand and like easily.
If I may share the personality and vision of the idime, we are a company that develops mobile accessories that are not generic. As you may know, mobile accessory market is huge and competition is fierce but we aim to offer smart and innovative accessories that have not been tried in the market before at a reasonable price. That’s the vision of idime.

TCD: How did you stumble upon this idea of making idime? For example where do you take the compact design inspiration from?

Steve: Quite naturally as an engineer, launching of the first iPhone intrigued many different thoughts for the new era to come. It also seemed that mobile industry is revolutionizing fast when everything else just stood there. Oh, I was talking about mobile accessories - sure there were some cool phone cases, earphones and maybe some innovative keyboards - and thought that there could be cooler and more innovative accessories. I think a lot - What would an accessory look like in 10 years or 20 years and how could I create and implement one that could trigger the innovation? - and this thought drove me to develop idime.

TCD: Elaborate a little about the design and components of the idime? The chips being used and further on.

Steve: idime maybe small in size but is packed with many different components. Multi layer PCB, flash memory and circuits - it was not easy to pack them all in a dime-sized cylinder.

TCD: How does idime compete with microSD cards? Which areas do you think the i.Dime has an advantage?

Steve: This is a great question. MicroSD has a very good interface and its pros. Easy to purchase and user-friendly but also got its cons. For example, it is easy to damage microSD card and the slot and that’s why Android phones got microSD card slots underneath the covers.
idime on the other hand is very simple to use. With the neodymium magnets with north and south magnets aligning it to attach at perfect orientation every time, it doesn’t take a genius to use one. Also, it’s closed design makes idime water and damage proof.

TCD: Can people install apps on idime or is limited to storing photos and other media content?

Steve: The i.dime application features an intuitive user interface that makes managing your files on your i.dime and iOS effortless. So there are mostly 3 parts to it;

Camera

Capture images and record videos directly onto the i.dime, rather than taking up more space on your phone.

File Manager 

Backup your native iOS contacts, photos and videos to the i.dime with a press of a single button.
Manage files on the i.dime with full visibility of all the files stored.

Content Viewer

View photos and video, play music and read documents of various types. i.dime app supports file formats that are not be supported by iOS including the following:
Audio: WAV, AAC, AIF, AIFF, CAF, M4A, MP3
Image: JPG, TIFF, GIF
Video: MP4, M4V, MPV, MOV, MKV, WMV, FLV, 3GP, GIF, AVI (subtitles as well: SRT, SUB, SBV)

So you can stop deleting games daily and get on it with idime.

Also, we are implementing cloud supports on the application. Current model of idime application supports OneDrive, Dropbox and Google drive. If there is a high demand in other third party cloud services. Once iOS opens up little more that we can start saving applications onto the idime, we will do so as well.

TCD: The idime can stick to the back of the case which your provide, what's preventing from getting easily stolen or thrown off upon rigid movement?

Steve: idime’s twist to click lock mechanism is very solid. We designed it so that it endures the impact even when it falls from 1.5 meters high right on to the side of the idime.

TCD: What is the material of the case of idime? Will there be some options to choose from say metal, leather back, plastic etc.

Steve: Current case is made of plastic and urethane, if current model proves that there is a market appetite for our products, we will start expanding up to aluminum, leather and other materials.

TCD:  What is the size of batteries which can fit into the idime case?

Steve: External battery for iPhone 6 / 6s: 73mm X 155mm X 10mm (W X H X T) / 155g

Capacity: 4700mAh. 

External battery for iPhone 6+ / 6s+: 83mm X 170mm X 10mm (W X H X T) / 205g

Capacity: 6900mAh

TCD: Will you be designing more cases for the iPads too? You can't practically deny the number of users using it everyday too!

Steve: This is something we are reviewing at the moment. We want to create a case that doesn’t feel or look foreign and current versions of the designs we have don’t really meet our standards.
But, idime on the lightning holder supports all iDevices with a lightning bottom port on. Simply snap it onto the lightning holder provided and plug it in.

TCD: Samsung's recent flagship Galaxy S6 and making it general, a wide variety of flagships are coming in metal back designs which don't allow us to expand our storage. Will you be expanding your line up for these particular phones too?

Steve: As a startup with limited budgets, we had to make a decision to focus and penetrate into iPhone market first. With the micro 5P holder, you can use the current version of idime that will work fine with androids. But if the demands are there, we would definitely consider expanding.

TCD: What are your future goals for this project if it exceeds the funding by quite some margin. What possible milestones do you have in mind?

Steve: Our primary goal is to commit ourselves to finalize and deliver finessed version of idime. We are developing another product that you can connect using the idime port, but it is too early to disclose it just yet.

TCD: From where do you think Entrepreneurs can make more money from Hardware or Software of the IT Industry? Or let's say launch more innovative products?

Steve: To me, it seems that Internet of Things and Wearable devices seems to be in trend. When it comes to innovation, I don’t think drawing a fine line between software and hardware means so much.

TCD: Finally, what is your advice to Freshman Entrepreneurs who are struggling in their current field?

Steve: I haven’t achieved much as an entrepreneur so I find it too early to give out any advices. But if I should, I would like to advise them to stay passionate and stubborn. It takes times to see the results yourself and even longer for the world to start understand your vision. A good startup is not built overnight but made over time with countless revisions. If you are going through hell right now, keep walking.

Now those are some extraordinary words from idime's founder. You can learn more about idime here. Let us know your thoughts on his products too!