Cell phone portable charger

[Stormin Mormon]

Was planning to meet a friend, yesterday. She emailed, to say "cell phone just died, so I won't know if you're running late". Got me to thinking.

Opens up an interesting topic. Survival cell phone charger. I remember hearing that after Hurricane Katrena, the cell phone towers were working in some of the outlying cities. People evacuated, and left the cell phone charger home, didn't have a car charger. Lot of discharged cell phones were around, after a day or two.

During or after an emergency, it sure is nice to be able to phone rescue agencies. Relatives to say "I'm OK, honey" and so forth. Might even help coordinate rescue efforts by cell phone when FRS or other radios aren't working.

I think it's a good idea to have a car charger for your phone. You can also run your car charger off a battery jumper pack, if the jump pack has power left in it. They also make crank up phone chargers with radio and light. Also I've seen a battery pack, typically three or four AA or AAA cells, and a plug to put in your phone.

[The Daring Dufas]

A very good idea that a group of manufacturers is pushing now is to produce interchangeable, universal cell phone chargers. So many chargers are winding up in the trash that in some future time may wind up mining land fills for the metal.

TDD

[Seth Goodman]

All the major manufacturers and cell phone providers (with the exception of Apple) have agreed to standardize on micro-USB cell phone chargers by the end of 2012.

Motorola has been using micro-USB on their cell phones and Bluetooth headsets for a few years now.

[Jeff Wisnia]

You left out solar chargers...

Jeff

[Mike S.]

Yeah, but while they're using a standardized connector, the signal handling isn't standard. A couple of the lines must be jumpered inside to tell the phone "hey, I'm a charger" or else no dice.

[Charlie]

For those of us in the hurricane risk area, this is a no brainer.

My niece didn't bother with a car charger and when hurricane Wilma took out her house power and she didn't have a car charger she was incommunicado for a week. Now she understands.

[George]

Another thing to consider is to choose your carrier wisely. Most are unbelievably crappy with only minimal battery and no generators. One carrier is totally anal about battery, generators and redundancy (VZW).

[trader4]

If you need a car charger or extra AC charger, etc, they are dirt cheap on Ebay, maybe $7. I just got a car charger, travel charger, silicone case, USB cable, and screen protectors for my new LG Dare for $15. And my phone has the micro USB connection for charging. So, I'm assuming if I use that to connect to a notebook, it will charge it too. Which could be of use as an emergency battery power source.

[Stormin Mormon]

Online search, finds that there are assortment of emergency chargers. Some, which run on single AA cell. And under twenty bucks. Incommunicado is no fun.

[Oren]

{Solar-powered clothing could be the next big trend for environmental enthusiasts. Researchers at North Carolina State University have designed a process called digital textile printing that makes it possible for solar panels to be fitted into jackets and ties.

The wearable solar panels act much like batteries when energized. With a consistency similar to paper, the panels shouldn?t weigh its wearers down too much.

However, the researchers did find problems with the neck tie: the solar panels make it extremely difficult to tie knots. They propose using a clip-on tie to remedy this problem.

The research team?s tie design contains a cell-phone pocket and 3.6V plug-in. And no, the solar clothing doesn?t create any dangerous electric shocks.}

[mm]

I got one online for about 6 or 7 dollars including shipping.

When using it, I got the message "invalid battery", and thought I had gone too cheap.

But recently I got the same message from my home charger, evne though the phone goes up to full charge.

I don't know what the message means or if my car charger is too cheap or not. (It was charging in the car for 30 or 60 minutes before the bad message, so surely I can get enough in for 10 or 20 minutes on the phone.)

[mm]

Not true. If you kiss someone who's standing on her head, it can result in 7.2 volts.

They have an inadequate testing regime.

[Oren]

I'm glad you cleared that up.