I forgot to do a review of this bit of kit on my TGO Challenge. It can be charged by connecting it to a USB socket on a PC. When fully charged in that way, it will give a half charge (two bars out of four) to my Blackberry Pearl when that is registering low charge. It was a different matter charging it via its little solar panel. Obviously, the more direct sunlight there is, the better. Whenever I could, I would attach it to the outside of my pack. I left it to charge for about three days. There was a fair amount of sun but, even then, it only gave the Blackberry one bar of charge - enough to keep posting to this blog and maybe a couple of brief phone calls. So, is it worth having and worth the £16.00 or so that it cost? Well, for the price and considering the small size of the solar panel, it's probably not bad and you get what you pay for. I shall stick with it. After all, it weighs very little and takes up no space but I'm not over impressed. I might invest in a spare battery for the Blackberry as well.
As you probably know, I've gone for the spare battery approach. Picked a couple up for around £5 each on Ebay. Two spare batteries (which last far better than the duff one I got with the phone) means I can go for 10 days between charges, whilst blogging every day (provided I'm not using the phone for lots of texts/phone calls/internet too).
ReplyDeleteI also invested in an electric plug with a USB connector output. I then selected the smallest of my collection of mini-USB leads. The result is a mains charger that is half the weight of the standard Blackberry charger.