Simple, cheap, inexpensive mobile charger battery pack?

This is it – the Maplin N62FX (their stock code). Recommended on another forum to someone who lamented the Touch Pro’s battery life; is this the Nirvana of battery chargers?

I currently have a PowerMonkey Classic battery charger. At the time, I thought it was great – you can charge it from USB, and it has tips for my HTC, iPod, etc. etc.  On the downside, the miniUSB tip sticks out almost 2 inches from the bottom of the phone, and is easy to break – I’ve gone through 3 in 5 months, despite taking care. It’s also £40, and a funny tubular shape, with 2200mAH of charge.

The Maplin charger:
- is small (about the width/height of a 10-pack of cigarettes)
- flat and slim (and half the thickness of the 10-pack)
- costs £9.99! So cheap, I bought two!
- claims to store 2000mAH
- comes with USB and even a mains charger – it has one charge in/out port, which is Mini-USB
- comes with lots of tips – although they’re quite bulky, and loose
- has a battery level indicator !!! – 4 green LEDs, which light when you press a button
- has on/off by the same button
- did I say it’s cheap?!?

So? Is it perfect?

It’s certainly convenient. I reach in my bag for both, and press the buttons to see which is charged. I connect one to my Touch Pro, which then sit neatly back-to-back, charging in my pocket. The rubberised coating helps keep them together, too. Back at home, or the hotel, I can use the one MiniUSB cable to charge my phone, then the battery (or batteries), ready for the next day.

However: if this is a 2000mAH battery, then how come it only charges my Touch Pro to 60%, when the Touch Pro is 1350mAH? ie. It should be able to charge it more than once over! So – more like 1000mAH, not 2000mAH. Lucky I bought two!

Also – the tips are a bit clunky. Although both my Touch Pro and the N62FX are mini-USB, I have a folded 30cm cable between the two. No biggie, but a tiny miniUSB-miniUSB would be nice. Can you get one anywhere on the planet? Nope. I’ve tried.

But overall: a good, honest, convenient, cheap portable battery. I love them. So get two!

Moving from Kaiser to HTC Touch Pro

Well, following my Kaiser’s early demise due to a loss of signal problem (something I’ve had with it before), I’m now on an early upgrade to a Touch Pro.

So… as I go through the usual “why did they do that?” process of change, what do I think?

- WHERE’S THE JOG-DIAL? Well, OK, the clue is in the name. But, still, the absence of a jog-dial, which most great and good PDA phones (P910, Hermes, Kaiser, most Blackberries), causes a hude drop in productivity for me. Particularly for moving emails around my Outlook folders, and using WMNewMenu5 for quickdials and SMSes (an essential tool for those of you who still have Jogdials!)
- Lack of buttons. Hermes had 6 buttons configurable in the settings tab; Kaiser had 5… +1 (a long press on button 5 providing the 6th). Touch Pro has… ONE! A long press of the Dial button. All others are non-configurable. Granted, the Hangup button can be long-pressed to give you a menu with four common commands (eg. silent, Flight modes), but they’re fixed.
- D-pad – less distinct than the older phones – you find yourself unable to press any button without pressing another by accident, butg after a day you master the changea
- Keyboard layout – changed a fair bit, meaning I’m pressing Enter instead of Delete, CAPS instead of A (and all other left-side keys feel shifted by 1 place), and FN is no longer in the bottom-left corner (why?!). Again, after a day, I’m getting used to them.
- Lack of Web/Mail buttons. Again, going through the Touch interface is slower than one button press, although dedicated mail and SMS keys on the keyboard do mitigate this, now I’m getting used to them.
- No Windows key (anywhere), and down from 3 OK buttons to just 1 (the ‘back’ button). Again, less convenient, but I’m getting used to it.
- Other keyboard issues: the keyboard seems fine – a bit smaller than the Kaiser, but I think I’ll get as fast on this as I was on that. Currency keys ($£€) are welcome, and the dedicated number keys are too. I find myself missing the tilt of the Kaiser and the possibility of finger-typing (only really used when my thumbs were tired), but again, you get used to it…

More moans coming up