Posts Tagged cell phones
Brunton Restore Portable Solar Power Supply
If we’re not all charging up our music players and cell phones with solar power, it’s not for lack of trying on the part of device manufacturers. Some of these solar devices actually work quite well too, like this portable power supply from Brunton.
The first idea here is you can charge it up at home or in a car ahead of time, like the iGo Power Extender and CallPod Fueltank Charger we reviewed before. Then you take it with you on a trip, using it to charge up your devices when you can’t get near an outlet, like on a plane or bus.
This goes a big step further though. The second idea is to use it as a solar charger when you are on a long camping or mountaineering trip off the grid. With the Brunton Restore and ample sunlight, you can restore your devices to full power. If it’s fully charged, it’ll reload your iPod or regular cell phone two or three times. It’ll fully charge a smart phone or gaming device one or two times. It has enough juice to recharge four AA batteries and can recharge your Bluetooth headset seven to eight times. For an iPod, one hour of sun equals six or seven hours of music—that is far superior to what most other competitors promise.
I left the unit in the sun for seven hours and it was all charged up—I could tell from the handy 4-light LED system. I was then able to fully charge my iPod twice and a half-empty phone and still have juice left in it.
This Brunton version is a bit heavier than some others I’ve tried, at 7.2 ounces, but it’s rubberized and really solid. It feels like it could be dropped off a roof and survive. It’s water resistant too. It flips open too and exposes two rather large panels, making it easier to operate (especially with one hand) than the three-panel Solio charger I’ve tried before.
There’s a handy design to this whereby you can plug in a USB cord to charge up anything attached to that, or you can pull out the male USB plug and insert it into the device. Or pull out the other end of the cable instead and it goes into a mini-USB slot like you see on Google phones and the SlotPlayer for example. There’s an adapter for micro USB as well, which other devices use. So basically you’re okay charging up any music player, communication device or camera, provided it uses some version of USB.
“But Tim, my damned Nokia phone and my damned Samsung phone need different adapters than these!” Well, there’s the biggest drawback with this. Eventually we’ll get to a happy place where every device shares the same standard charger setup, but until that time you have to keep fooling with tips and adapters. Brunton doesn’t offer any help in that department, so if your device doesn’t come with some kind of USB charger, you’re SOL unless you can find some adapter on eBay that will do the trick. For Apple devices, you’ll have to bring along the USB cord to connect the device to a USB port on the charger.
The Restore retails for around $90, but the packaging says it’ll give you the output equivalent of 1,372 AA batteries. You can use this charger 500 times before the internal battery will wear out, which is probably plenty for a lifetime unless you’re a hermit moving to Death Valley. If you’ll be in the wilderness or you’re just a backpacker who will be in a place where sunshine is far more prevalent than reliable electricity, this is a solid solar charger that really works.
Get the Brunton Restore Portable Power Device at REI.com
Posted by Tim in Adventure Gear, General Gear on March 4th, 2010
DROID ERIS by HTC Smartphone
Here’s my disclaimer right off the bat: I’m a relatively new smartphone adapter. I just got a Blackberry in the fall of 2009. I don’t regularly review “tech” items; I leave that to my in-the-know colleague John, who is great at writing about phones, apps and netbooks. (Me? I dig covering cute capris and flip flops.) Generally speaking, I’m a luddite — though my mom thinks I’m a tech genius since I know how to upload photos to Shutterfly. (It’s all relative.)
That all said, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to check out a touch-screen phone with the Google Android operating system — specifically, the DROID ERIS by HTC. This phone is really, really cool — it’s got some amazing capabilities and personalizing features. It syncs with your Google and Facebook accounts with the press of a button — all of your Gmail contacts are instantly loaded. You can share images you’ve taken with the phone’s camera to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Picasa easily — it really connects beautifully with the major social networks out there. It organizes all of your “communications” with each of your contacts by person — so you have a running log of all phone calls, texts and Facebook interactions with each of your friends.
But what I found after using this amazingly capable smart phone is that I don’t need all these bells and whistles. When I’m traveling — whether it’s to a foreign country or down the road to the grocery store — all I really want is to have instant access to a phone and email. (Twitter is a distant third requirement.)
I don’t need the thousands of nifty applications available via the Android Market, even though there are some silly games that my young kids downloaded that kept them occupied on a recent road trip. There are hundreds of free apps in the “Travel” category, from hotel finders to NYC subway maps to English-Spanish dictionaries, but none are “must have” items for my phone. I’ve gotten along without them for years; I really don’t need them now.
And I really missed the button keyboard on my Blackberry. After three weeks of using a touch-screen keyboard–even with its “word prediction” and “spell correction” — I think I’m a much more accurate typist on my not-near-as-sleek Blackberry Tour.
Here are a few more observations — and I do recognize that it’s apples to oranges when I compare the DROID ERIS to my Blackberry, but, hey, it’s all I know.
The DROID ERIS is super-slim and attractive. I love how it feels in my hands. The home-screen graphics are crisp and clean and downright cute. (The little, green, droid alien guy appears when you power on and off and it’s on the Android Market widget.)
Set up is easy. I have always had my husband deal with calling our phone provider (Verizon Wireless) to set up new cell phones. But I insisted on doing this one, and it was painless. Syncing my Twitter, Facebook and Gmail accounts was a piece of cake with step-by-step visual cues.
You can personalize seven home screens. I fit all of my must-have widgets and contacts on one screen, but for users who are in constant contact with several friends, you can load their info in a easy-access widget and store it on one screen you might use for “play.” Store work contacts on your “work” screen. Put the kids’ favorite game apps on another screen. Put your web browser — if you use it frequently — on the other. You get my drift. You can really customize your phone the way you like to use it.
The Twitter application, Peep, failed a lot. As I mentioned above, I use my smartphone to make calls, check email and send Twitter updates. So it was a bummer when I often got fail messages. I also prefer Blackberry’s Ubertwitter to the Droid’s Peep. In Ubertwitter, you can scroll over (via the trackball) to a URL and it will take you to the site via the phone’s web browser; in Peep, you have to touch the screen “just right” to get a URL to work. I also never figured out how to search Twitter in Peep; in Ubertwitter it’s more obvious how to do that.
You have to charge the DROID ERIS nightly. I ran out of battery power if I was away from my home office most of the day and checking email frequently, or my kids were running down the battery playing games on the phone. I just don’t have that kind of battery drain with my Blackberry. On the DROID ERIS, the screen goes black to save battery power after mere seconds; annoying if you’re checking email a lot (like I do).
In the end, I really don’t think I’ll miss my sample DROID ERIS after I send it back to the manufacturer next week. I’m so glad I now understand what it’s like to use a touch-screen Droid phone with incredible social capabilities, but I’m fine with returning to what I think is a simpler phone, for my simple smartphone ways. My children, however, think differently — they’ll miss the Snake, Guitar Hero and Light Racer 3D game apps they’ve been playing for weeks.
The DROID ERIS is currently solely for Verizon Wireless customers. It’s $99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with new two-year customer agreement. Buy at Verizon Wireless stores or online.
Posted by Kara in General Gear on February 26th, 2010
Phone Home, Save Money: Vonage Mobile
If you’re heading to the Vancouver Winter Olympics and want to make inexpensive calls back to the U.S., the solution could be as near as your portable MP3 player.
Vonage Mobile offers inexpensive worldwide calling—anywhere there’s a Wi-Fi signal—by turning an iPod Touch into a phone. It also works on the iPhone and BlackBerry models. And the one-cent a minute rate between the U.S. and Canada is hard to beat.
Besides Vonage Mobile—a free download from the Apple app store—all that’s needed to turn the iPod Touch into a phone is is a wireless connection and a headphone set with a microphone (such as V-MODA’s Vibe II or Faze). The program for other platforms can be downloaded from Vonage Mobile’s website.
As long as there is a Wi-Fi signal, Vonage Mobile makes a VoIP connection for international calls—you’re talking over the Internet. That means if you’re using it on an iPhone or BlackBerry, it does not use cellular minutes. (Note: The iPod Touch will not receive incoming calls.)
Installing the program is quick and easy. Vonage’s World Mobile plan offers unlimited calling to more than 60 countries for $24.99 a month and competitive rates to other parts of the world. Vonage also offers a pay-per-use plan by adding funds to your account, in advance, with a credit card.
Other per-minute rates range from two cents between the U.S. and Hong Kong to $13.92 to a UPT (Universal Personal Telecommunications) number. I was also able to make calls within the US with my iPod Touch.
The call quality with Vonage Mobile is good. In fact, I’d pick it over another mobile VoIP service, Skype. While Skype has worked well for me on a PC, I’ve been disappointed with its implementation, call quality and other issues on mobile devices. The results will depend, of course, on the quality of the wireless signal and the headset/microphone used.
After a query from the Federal Communications Commission, AT&T announced in October that it was opening its cellular network to allow VoIP apps to run on its 3G and 2G data channels, instead of just Wi-Fi. With that, I expect we’ll see more and improved VoIP programs for smartphones—and iPods and maybe the iPad, too—in the future.
Posted by JohnG in Business Gear, General Gear on February 9th, 2010
A Cell Phone Booster that Works: Wilson Sleek
An unusual testing ground for a cell-phone booster
One of the world’s most important wetland areas might seem like an unusual place to test a cell-phone booster. But swampy Caddo Lake, surrounded by moss-draped cypress trees and straddling the Texas-Louisiana border, is mighty tough on mobile phones.
So that’s one of the places I went to test Wilson Electronics’ new Sleek Universal Cell Phone Signal Booster. There could be no better test than driving down Pine Island Rd., where I’ve spent a lot of time and always had trouble making calls. Sure enough, my phone soon showed no signal. Nothing. Zip. Completely out of touch.
I stopped in a dreaded “dead zone,” not too far from Caddo landmarks like Mill Pond, Alligator Thicket and Hell’s Half Acre. Then, I plugged in the Sleek amplifier. Just like magic, my phone began showing three and four bars (instead of none) and I was able to make calls like I was back in civilization.
Simply put, the Sleek works. And it works well.
The Sleek is scheduled for release in March, but the folks at Wilson invited me to try one before it hits the stores. Basically, the Sleek is a small amplifier, made for cars, that boosts both the received signal and the signal being transmitted back to the cell tower.
It can (and did) increase a cell phone’s received and transmitted signals by 10 to 20 times. That can mean the difference between a mediocre signal and a very strong signal, which means fewer dropped calls. Or if a phone shows no signal, the Sleek may be able to provide enough of a boost to actually make calls.
I did some further testing in other areas and found the Sleek would typically increase the signal strength displayed on my HTC Tilt2 by two to four bars (out of five). Then, I put the phone in test mode so I could see the actual received signal strength. The Sleek consistently increased the received signal by at least 10 times. Better signals also mean improved battery life.
It can be used with all cell-phone models and providers, except the iDEN/Nextel network.
All this works in a very small package that only takes minutes to install. The light and compact amplifier is built into the back of a cradle that holds the phone. The cradle is adjustable to fit different sizes of phones.
An adhesive mount is included. Wilson also offers other options, including a mounting arm that fits in a cup holder and a suction-cup mount that attaches to the windshield. These mounts are very handy if you also use your smartphone for GPS navigation.
The Sleek is powered by a lighter plug. The cradle also includes a mini-USB port which can be used to charge your phone. The amplifier is connected to a small, magnetic-mount antenna which attaches to the top of your car.
The phone must be in the cradle for the amplifier to work. But you should be using a Bluetooth or other hands-free device while driving anyway, right? If you need a Bluetooth headset, check out a couple of my faves: the Motorola Endeavor HX1 and the Plantronics Discovery 975.
(If you’d prefer an amplifier that works without placing the phone in the cradle, Wilson also offers the Signalboost MobilePro that connects wirelessly to the phone. It can be used in a car or hotel room to boost voice or aircard signals and a home adapter kit is also available. The phone needs to be within two or three feet of the amplifier, but it provides similar performance gains to the Sleek.)
Wilson Electronics' Chief Operating Officer Joe Banos demonstrates the Sleek at the 2010 International CES
The Sleek sets a new price point for cell-phone boosters, with a retail of $129. The actual street price may be close to $100. The Sleek is expected to be available through major online retailers and some brick-and-mortar stores.
Wilson products are made in the U.S. and the company offers free tech support, by phone or e-mail, from its manufacturing facility in Utah.
The Sleek will also include a 30-day, “no questions asked” return policy.
Wilson has been making cell-phone amplifiers for years, but the Sleek is a breakthrough product because of its small size and attractive price point. Other than not working on Nextel/iDEN networks, what’s not to like? In a world filled with advertising hype, it’s nice to find a product that delivers as promised.
If you do ever visit Caddo Lake, it might be a good idea to leave the cell phone behind and enjoy the scenery. But if you do need to make a call there, or in thousands of other places where signals are weak, the Sleek could have you saying, “I can hear you now” instead of watching your phone search for a signal. And that could be worth more than a case of mosquito spray at Caddo.
More on Caddo: Caddo Lake is included in the Ramsar designation of the world’s most significant wetland areas. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department operates Caddo Lake State Park and Wildlife Management Area. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also recently opened the Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge. Caddo is also a favorite place to visit for musician Don Henley of the Eagles.
Posted by JohnG in Business Gear, General Gear, Travel Light on February 8th, 2010
Best and Worst Travel Gear of 2009
We’ve been cranking out first-person reviews of travel gear on a daily basis and trying out lots of things as we hike, backpack, explore new cities, and navigate airports. Some items disappoint, some thrill, some defy expectations, so here’s a list of what worked and what didn’t in 2009.
Kara Williams
Item I used on the most trips this year
These Lucy capris pictured above are comfortable and stylish—they can go from the hiking trail to the dinner table. I wore them on the top of the Continental Divide in Colorado, to Maya ruins in Belize, to an ecological preserve in Mexico, and eating lobster in New Hampshire.
Worst piece of crap I gave up on
This battery-operated mosquito repellent is a travel-gear don’t. The blue plastic fan looks like a toy, so it’s dangerous to young children. Plus, it’s dorky and doesn’t work.
Most useful item for $20 or less
The Flip & Tumble bag. A reusable shopping bag that compacts into a tiny, squishy, 3-inch ball is a must-have for any traveler. Use it to tote items to the pool, buy groceries at the local market, or protect packed clothing from dirty shoes on the return trip.
John Gordon
Item I now cannot live without
It took a long time, but I’ve finally found a Bluetooth headset I can love. Motorola’s Endeavor HX1 (pictured at the top) offers excellent audio quality for normal conversations and true bone-conduction technology, like special forces use, to knock out extreme noise. Voice prompts make it easy to use.
Worst “Do we really need this?” item
Some things I just don’t understand, like Planesheets for covering airline seats. Besides the dubious claims of cleanliness, I’d just feel a little weird being the only passenger on the plane sitting in a zebra-stripe seat.
Most questionable travel app
iPhone and iPod users are familiar with the marketing line, “There’s an app for that.” Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Without Fear app is supposed to calm white-knuckled flyers. There’s a screen that says, “This is natural. We know you’re scared. You’re going to be OK.” Like that’s going to help.
Never leave home without it
My AT&T Tilt 2 smartphone (same as the HTC Touch Pro2) lets me keep in touch with friends and clients whether I’m at the neighborhood store or in another part of the world. Sure, AT&T sells a lot more iPhones than this model. When the iPhone gets a real keyboard, can tether to my laptop and lets me swap out the battery, I’ll consider it.
Tim Leffel
Worst Case of Greenwashing
There was plenty of greenwashing to go around this year and the “green gear” tag keeps making its way onto things that really aren’t. I debunked plenty of these, but the most obvious one was this Altus Lumen LED light that burns through four AA batteries in an hour. Decent product otherwise, but the bombastic claim of being “the world’s first sustainable portable LED light” turned out to be based on one factor: the shell is 75% recyclable—provided you pry it all apart and separate the pieces when the thing dies.
What I used the most this year
There were plenty of items I tried out and then put on a shelf. The new things I tried that became a permanent part of my ensemble included the Tom Bihn Aeronaut carry-on bag (pictured at the top), my Teva Omnium sandal shoes, and pretty much everything I put on from ExOfficio—including their underwear. And I almost never pack my bags without a pair of Tifosi Optics sunglasses and some kind of Keen Footwear shoes.
Item that caused the most mixed feelings
I have to admit the Starbucks Via instant coffee tastes ten times better than Sanka or Folgers, but at $1 a serving, it sure better! If you already like the over-roasted, burnt taste of Starbucks, you’ll like this stuff. Even if you don’t, instant coffee that’s drinkable would be worth packing on a camping trip or when staying any place where hot water is more readily available than real coffee.
Honorable Mention – Past year’s standout that keeps coming back:
Travel gear item I would gladly do infomercials for
Only real travelers who have used it believe this $99 SteriPEN Traveler is for real. It looks fishy, I’ll admit: you stick this in the water you’re going to drink, the light kills everything, then you can drink away. But I, my wife, and my daughter have used this daily in 9, 6, and 4 countries respectively without getting sick. ‘Nuff said.
Posted by Tim in Adventure Gear, Business Gear, Kids and Family, Travel Light on January 1st, 2010
