Eggcyte creates the Egg to store data when your smartphone runs out of space

If your selfies and videos are taking up all of the space on your smartphone, then the Egg “personal web device” is for you.

Eggcyte is launching a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign today to raise $150,000 for the egg-shaped hardware storage gadget that can sync images and videos with your smartphones and cameras. It allows you to back up the data on your smartphone without the risk of having someone hack into a cloud account. It is one more device that shows how much computing power and storage can be contained in a small space, and how voracious our own needs are for more space to store our selfies.

The device has an Intel Atom chip, the Tizen operating system, and flash memory storage. A 64-gigabyte (GB) version will be $200, 128GB will be $300, and 256GB will be $400. It has a built-in, self-configuring web server that enables users to use the Egg to share videos, photos, music, or files without having to use a cloud service. It is password-protected, so that if you lose it, no one else can get access to your personal content.

“The Egg makes it easier to share precisely what you want to share,” said Barry Solomon, cofounder of Eggcyte, in an interview with VentureBeat. “Consumers have been running out of storage, and they’re resorting to the cloud. But cloud sharing isn’t always private. Our response was to create the Egg.”

Above: The Egg

Image Credit: Eggcyte

The Egg is an extension of your smartphone. It can connect via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or a wired universal serial bus (USB) connector. That last way is the quickest method to transfer or play back your videos.

The device fits in the palm of your hand, and its data won’t fall into the hands of big cloud services if you don’t want it to. It automatically imports data from your device, once you configure it on the 2.4-inch touchscreen display of the egg. The device has a screen, Solomon said, because that gives you more options for what to back up or share. And you can use the screen to view your content as well.

“You can gather content from any of your devices,” Solomon said.

It works with any device that has a USB port, and it has a converter for Mini USB as well. So that means it works with iPhones, Android phones, digital cameras, and sports cameras. The Egg will also come with iOS and Android apps that let users seamlessly access the Egg from anywhere. You can even put movies on the Egg and stream them to your devices.

“During trials we found The Egg to be tremendously versatile. Users took their Eggs with them on vacation or to events to make sure they always had space available on their devices when they needed it the most,” said Thomas Martis, cofounder of Eggcyte, in a statement.

The project got started inside Intel, and the world’s biggest chip maker spun it out in 2012. So far, the company has been bootstrapped. The Egg has been in development for more than two years, and its Kickstarter campaign will run for 45 days. Chandler, Ariz.-based Eggcyte said it hopes to have the device available in August 2015. The Egg is expected to have 10 to 12 hours of battery life. And developers will be able to make their own apps for it.

Solomon previously worked at Intel, and he has been a product manager and strategic planner in Silicon Valley for decades. Other founders include Jesus David Nevarez, a veteran software architect, and Munindra Khaund, a project management and user interface expert. Martis is a systems engineer who has working on project such as Nokia’s first smartphone.

Rivals include wireless storage device makers such as SanDisk, Seagate, and Western Digital.

“We think that, at its heart, this device is more than a storage unit,” Solomon said. “It’s a sharing device.”

Above: The Egg is a local storage device.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi