The World's First USB Flash Drive with an iPhone Lightning Connector

Today's devices are making more and more use of the cloud to share data and communicate with each other. But while cloud storage is certainly causing a paradigm shift in how we interact with our data, there are still some areas that benefit from good old-fashioned wired interactions, especially where data-restricted mobile devices are concerned. The first USB flash drive with an Apple-approved iPhone Lightning connector, the iStick allows you to transfer files instantly without syncing your mobile device to the computer.

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Instead of using your data plan and iPhone hard drive for large files, you can toss them onto the iStick and access them directly from the phone via the iStick app. If you feel like downloading them to your phone or iPad, you can. Since you might have a restricted data connection or don't want to wait ten minutes for a file to download, the iStick's immediate transfer might actually make USB flash drives relevant again.

But besides its speed and convenience over the cloud (well, convenient depending on the situation), the iStick is also a more secure choice than a third party that stores your data, making it an attractive solution for the security conscious.

With sizes ranging from 8GB to 128GB, the iStick might be a good tool to have on hand, so you can keep your phone backed up and your movie library on standby. We're not sure how long this little gadget will be relevant — Moore's law and all — but it's certainly a useful stopgap until the cloud gets faster and signals get stronger.


Ethan Wolff-Mann is an editor for Supercompressor. Up until 2013 he had a flip phone. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.