Phone charger

[Loobylouu79]

Hey

Im looking for some opinions from festival goers:

How do you charge your mobile phone?

Do any of you use any type of solar powered device? How do you find them?

I have modelled a solar charger for a uni project that you could wear round your neck..does this sound feasible and would you wear one?

Thanks for your help!

Lx

[Yoghurt on a Stick]

I just use the plug in charger that came with the phone. For Glasto this year I bought another battery on line for £4. This saved the need for having a re-charger such as a solar powered one.

[eFestivals]

with spare batteries costing less than a tenner there's little need for more-hassle alternative ways of charging a phone at a festival.

[nightcrawler13]

with spare batteries costing less than a tenner there's little need for more-hassle alternative ways of charging a phone at a festival.

[eFestivals]

unless you're one of those folks with an iphone or if you go from one festival to another?

Out of the 80 bin painters and 30 friends at this glastonbury, a total of 7 of us had working phones after the first two days...

i would very much like my friends to come prepared with spare batteries, but they dont i've always wanted a solar charger for this reason. Though if you made one to go around the neck you'd have to make sure it charges on both sides, or it will be more hassle than it's worth to keep flipping it over

if a person isn't organised enough to sort themselves out with a spare battery and remember to bring it, then they're not going to manage to sort themselves out with one of these chargers and remember to bring it, are they?

The only advantage with something like this - depending on its features of course - is that one person remembering to bring this charger might be able to charge all their mates' phones.

Which is fine if the person with the charger is happy to be the lacky for the others over something that is now so everyday that it's much like them forgetting to eat and expecting their lackey to spoon feed them.

[jump]

I don't even bother with my phone at fests as I'd only use it to figure out how long to the next band is on.

[nightcrawler13]

Which is fine if the person with the charger is happy to be the lacky for the others over something that is now so everyday that it's much like them forgetting to eat and expecting their lackey to spoon feed them.

[eFestivals]

what you call "being a lacky" i call being the one with the brains to rememeber something that makes it easier for everyone else...

or being nice

ahhh, OK. Perhaps it takes an even greater amount of brains to not have friends who are f**kwits?

[Loobylouu79]

unless you're one of those folks with an iphone or if you go from one festival to another?

Out of the 80 bin painters and 30 friends at this glastonbury, a total of 7 of us had working phones after the first two days...

i would very much like my friends to come prepared with spare batteries, but they dont i've always wanted a solar charger for this reason. Though if you made one to go around the neck you'd have to make sure it charges on both sides, or it will be more hassle than it's worth to keep flipping it over

[nightcrawler13]

Thanks for your input - the charger was aimed more for the smart phone user as these take the most juice. I didnt think about it being double sided PV as the phone itself was meant to be held on the other side, but thats an interesting point. Thanks for your help!

Lx

[Rufus Gwertigan]

with spare batteries costing less than a tenner there's little need for more-hassle alternative ways of charging a phone at a festival.

[Bisque]

I take my Freeloader solar charger & pre charge it before I go. Comes with loads of adapters for different phones & you can use the sun to recharge it.

My friend borrowed it off me once. I then found out he used it to charge up the girl from our neighbouring campsites phone & later copped off with her. Well worth it then imo.

Since getting a Blackberry I got a couple of batteries off eBay for less than £3, they take ages to arrive from China but work just as well as the original.

Tbh a solar charger that you could wear around your neck would be to small to catch any solar rays & would be too small to hold enough electrical energy to give any decent amount of power to a phone.

You can already purchase a Supercharger to increase the speed of the charge to my Freeloader. Even with this added & decent sunlight... it still takes ages to charge the battery pack.

[LusciousLucy]

This is the be all and end all of portable phone chargers:

Trent iCruiser

The amount of items it can charge was described to me by Strudders and it shall be purchased once the funds become available. Noone can poo poo this and say what they have is better because nothing comes close currently. 11000mAh...do the maths.

[eFestivals]

Noone can poo poo this and say what they have is better because nothing comes close currently.

yeah they can.

Mains electricity at home and a spare battery. That is cheaper than that charger, has more power than any charger, is smaller and lighter than any charger, and the battery is charged far quicker at a fest cos it doesn't need to be charged.

While I'm being factious with that comment it's still entirely true. With batteries as cheap as they now are I don't understand why anyone would bother with a mobile charger. There's simply no need.

[TheGayTent]

With batteries as cheap as they now are I don't understand why anyone would bother with a mobile charger.

[eFestivals]

Environmental reasons?

Genuine question, don't know the answer, never considered it.

I guess that might be relevant - I was concentrating on the economic and ease-of-use aspects.

While batteries have lots of horrid chemicals within them, I wouldn't be surprised to find that there's a higher environmental cost from a mobile charger than there is a battery. Plus it's probably much more likely that a battery would be recycled but a charger wouldn't.

But if the environmental aspect is that big a deal to anyone, they'd surely swerve both those options and use an on-site charging service (like the Orange tents at Glasto) instead. The high re-use of their charging kit would, I reckon, more than cover the environmental aspects of a solar powered charger that would be only used on a small number of occasions as a charger for festivals would be.

[Bisque]

With batteries as cheap as they now are I don't understand why anyone would bother with a mobile charger. There's simply no need.

[eFestivals]

Unless you have an iPhone.

so are you saying that the iPhone is less than perfect? Someone better tell Apple, quick.

[Loobylouu79]

I guess that might be relevant - I was concentrating on the economic and ease-of-use aspects.

While batteries have lots of horrid chemicals within them, I wouldn't be surprised to find that there's a higher environmental cost from a mobile charger than there is a battery. Plus it's probably much more likely that a battery would be recycled but a charger wouldn't.

But if the environmental aspect is that big a deal to anyone, they'd surely swerve both those options and use an on-site charging service (like the Orange tents at Glasto) instead. The high re-use of their charging kit would, I reckon, more than cover the environmental aspects of a solar powered charger that would be only used on a small number of occasions as a charger for festivals would be.

Edited July 27, 2011 by Loobylouu79

[eFestivals]

The environmental reasons was part of my project actually, I considered the charger tents such as Orange etc but who wants to stand around waiting for a phone to be charged at a festival?!

someone with a high environmental motivation? Just a thought.

There's no doubt at all that an often-utilised charging device is more environmentally friendly on a usage basis that a rarely used one.

And of course your device will be an additional device, one that could reasonably be considered unnecessary when everyone already has a charging device - and so on that basis it scored exceedingly poorly on the environmental front.

The only place that it does score is with being solar - but the carbon saving from that wouldn't even cover the carbon created by it's manufacture for just about every one that might be purchased, because it's unlikely that your solar charger would be used on anything more than an occasional basis.

[Bisque]

so are you saying that the iPhone is less than perfect? Someone better tell Apple, quick.

[Loobylouu79]

someone with a high environmental motivation? Just a thought.

There's no doubt at all that an often-utilised charging device is more environmentally friendly on a usage basis that a rarely used one.

And of course your device will be an additional device, one that could reasonably be considered unnecessary when everyone already has a charging device - and so on that basis it scored exceedingly poorly on the environmental front.

The only place that it does score is with being solar - but the carbon saving from that wouldn't even cover the carbon created by it's manufacture for just about every one that might be purchased, because it's unlikely that your solar charger would be used on anything more than an occasional basis.