CES 2016: Someone has finally made an 'unbreakable' iPhone charger

The Snakable's ball-jointed design should stop it breaking as easily as stock iPhone cables

The snakable's ball joints prevent the ends from breaking (Snakable)

After all the buzz around flashy cars and 8K TVs at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, one much more modest product is making a big stir.

The Snakable charger, which started life as a Kickstarter project in April 2014, promises to be a power cable that won't get destroyed as quickly as the usual iPhone chargers.

It manages this by having three ball joints at either end of the cable - these joints move freely, preventing the fragile ends of the cable from making any harsh bends.

This stops the connecting part between the cable and the connector becoming damaged and frayed, the usual cause of death for most stock phone power cables, which usually don't last longer than a few months of normal use.

There's some fixes for this already - some people recommend wrapping the ends of your cables with springs from pens or shrink wrap, but that's a little fiddly, and would likely be a temporary solution anyway.

Snakable have a fairly small stand at CES, but compared to some of the other high-profile gadgets on offer (the Fitbit smartwatch, anyone?), it looks like it might actually be quite useful.

The cables currently sell for $30 (£20), but with shipping to the UK, the whole thing will cost closer to $45 (£31).

That seems like a lot for a charger, but a new iPhone cable costs £15 (and another £15 for the plug), so it could be a smart investment if your chargers tend to break