ultralite phone charging ......what to use on the a.t.?

[corrales_305]

I wanted to bring a phone along with me on my 1 month section hike from harpers ferry on north. so how do I charge my phone? Solar panels can be heavy or some don't even work. There is not that much sun in parts of the a.t. Should I just not bring a phone? maybe bring the home charger and charge when I'm in a town. Don't really know what to do about this and have not heard a lot of people talking about this type of problem. Weight is my biggest concern other that the gadget actually charging my phone at least once every 2 days, also price is a factor(sorry not rich). If anyone has a solution or ideas please let me know ..thanks peepz

[1azarus]

i've found the cheapest thing to do is to carry an extra battery (i actually carry 2 extra batteries...) they can usually be found cheap enough on amazon, and extra batteries are way lighter than any alternative i know of... along with a plug in charger for use in town, you are good to go. ...that is, if your phone has removable batteries. i do tend to use my phone for reading, gps and weather more than probably necessary. another way to go is to just baby your battery use between town charges.

good luck on your hike!!!

[hikingshoes]

I plan on using this. Once in town I can chg both cell phone and power pack at the same time.
http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-P4000.../dp/B009M27MBC

[corrales_305]

good idea Lazarus. I just found a spare battery for my galaxy s3 a couple of weeks ago in a broken phone and maybe I can also carry a battery pack like hikingshoes to extend my batt to 5 days which is when I plan to resupply in town. I gotta check how long does one batt last my phone being off most of the time. do you think stores will mind letting me charge my phone when I get into town. Are stores cool about that near the a.t.?

[Mr. Bumpy]

The New Trent iTorch 5200 is cheap and works as advertised. I get about 3-4 charges out of it on an iPhone4. After six months of moderate use and getting soaked once it still works great. If there is a downside it would be that it takes several hours to charge once it is dead.

[Old Hiker]

On my attempt, I had two extra batteries, battery charger, phone and phone charger. Way too much, looking back, even though they were grams. Hardly ever had reception (ATT) from Springer to Thomas Knob Shelter, so I hardly used the phone. Never had data. Will probably go with 1 extra battery and charger + phone next time. May juggle battery charger vs. phone charger to see which is lighter. Charge the battery up inside the phone.

[corrales_305]

I don't think it is a good ideal to be several hrs in a store charging a battery pack and then still having to charge my phone which takes a while too. I might just go with the 2 phone batteries and that's all.(I don't know about Verizon reception+4g Lte coverage on A.T.) chances are, I am not gonna have reception or at least data for gps anyway. As for the pictures, a couple of pics a day should not drain the battery that much. best of all the spare batt weighs in @2.2 oz with the home charger. On the other hand solar charger I saw weight are from 6-11oz so it is lighter too. The drawback on the powerpack is that it takes long to charge.

[Slo-go'en]

Solar chargers are useless.

If you don't use the phone all that much (say an hour a day or less) all you need to do is add some charge every couple of days and that doesn't take too long. (Be sure to keep it powerd down or in airplane mode the rest of the time) Chances are good you'll want a motel room every so often where you can really top of the battery(s).

Once you learn where to look, finding outdoor electrical outlets is pretty easy and many of them are hidden well enough you can leave the device unattended without much risk of someone seeing it. (Hint - look for vending machines)

You shouldn't have any trouble with Verison coverage, it is the carrier of choice for the AT.

[leaftye]

If you can make the main and spare battery last an entire month, then that's definitely the way to go.

I'm using a tiny ultralight usb charger with crocodile clips to charge the main battery outside of the phone. Both parts of the charger weigh less than an ounce. I can also use it to charge my headlamp battery, which is also lithium ion. This allows me to use my phone with the spare battery while the main battery charges. If someone steals it while charging, they only get a $10 charger instead of my phone.

[leaftye]

My charger requires some assembly. This is much bigger and heavier, but still small and light. More importantly, it just needs a USB slot.

http://budgetlightforum.com/node/22561

MiniUSB3.jpg

[corrales_305]

that a pretty cool charger leaftye. but how do you get it to charge a phone battery which has a lot smaller leads on the battery

[corrales_305]

I never thought of vending machines as power sources good to keep that in mind. makes sense. lol.... thanks

[leaftye]

that a pretty cool charger leaftye. but how do you get it to charge a phone battery which has a lot smaller leads on the battery

My phone battery has bigger pads that give the clips plenty of room to attach. It sounds like your contact points may be more like slits, right? I would grind down one side of each clip so the remaining side can knife down into the contact points. If you'd like, post a picture of your battery. I'll see if I can find a battery like that and use a couple of my spare clips to see if I can make it work. The main thing I'd be worried about it preventing the leads from shorting. I got an idea for that too.

[Aughra]

I use the New Trent. It charges my iphone 5 times or I can charge my camera a few times.

[Wise Old Owl]

OMG!......................Seriously? Nevermind. (the whole thread)


OK I am a little upset ... I am working on several light weight ideas to charge a smart phone... Solar and Titanium Power Pots... Things that will work with New Trent or Anker which are good ideas, I am a fan of Anker and working on a UL stripped down solar and I am in testing phase..We are talking ounces.

http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/show...use&highlight=

[corrales_305]

I Read the link that owl posted...Maybe I'm wrong, but the problem that I'm seeing with the blue solar panels (or any not protected) is that it is kind of hard to store it in a frameless pack without breaking it. (unless I missed something in the amazon ad) I think that the panel would need some form of protection weather it's some type of clear hard resin, gorilla glass, I don't know... something. The other thing is that I keep hearing that there is not that much sun on the trail so if you have to wait 3-4 hours (at best) for the panels to charge your battery its going to be a drag. Usually panels I have used take 8-16 of glaring sun to charge my phone, so if the blue panels can charge in 3-4 hrs that would be an accomplishment itself. Lastly, what are Titanium Power Pots?

[corrales_305]

as you can see the contacts are very small on the batteryoriginal-samsung-galaxy-s3-li-ion-battery-2100-mah-eb-l1g6llagsta23857.jpg

[leaftye]

as you can see the contacts are very small on the batteryoriginal-samsung-galaxy-s3-li-ion-battery-2100-mah-eb-l1g6llagsta23857.jpg

It would have been much easier if the contacts were on the bottom or top face instead of the edge. Let me see what I can come up with.

[4Bears]

WOO check this out... http://www.suntactics.com/shop/usb-scharger-5/ ..... here is Stumpknockers initial test report.... http://trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=397179 for your reading pleasure.

[Wise Old Owl]

I Read the link that owl posted...Maybe I'm wrong, but the problem that I'm seeing with the blue solar panels (or any not protected) is that it is kind of hard to store it in a frameless pack without breaking it. (unless I missed something in the amazon ad) I think that the panel would need some form of protection weather it's some type of clear hard resin, gorilla glass, I don't know... something. The other thing is that I keep hearing that there is not that much sun on the trail so if you have to wait 3-4 hours (at best) for the panels to charge your battery its going to be a drag. Usually panels I have used take 8-16 of glaring sun to charge my phone, so if the blue panels can charge in 3-4 hrs that would be an accomplishment itself. Lastly, what are Titanium Power Pots?

The panel is under hard resin and attached to a fiberglass board - its already protected.

Gorrila Glass is a scratch resistant panel for your phone and is still very breakable, It is not needed for solar.

Aluminum power pots at ten ounces>>>>> http://www.thepowerpot.com/ I am making one from scratch in ti.

Thanks 4 bears that's a great example of good competitive unit in a case.