If you’re a little frustrated with your iPhone 3G’s battery life, you might consider picking up a solar charger instead of one of the other battery packs. You might as well make your gadget a little more eco-friendly by charging it via the sun.
This case from Mobilefun does have a couple drawbacks, in general it is slightly more inconvenient than the usual battery packs. For instance it takes ten hours to bring the case’s battery to a full charge. Then if you happen to run your iPhone out of juice it could take three hours to get it to a point where it’s running again.
The ten hours part really wouldn’t be too bad since you could leave it in a window while you’re at work or in your car. To charge up your phone just insert it into the case. There is no word on a price just yet but they are expected to be released sometime this month.
[via ecogeek]
they should make a wind up thing too that can be plugged in. that would be cool as well as this
I’m no expert here, but isn’t leaving your iPhone sitting on the window sill baking in the sun all day so the solar case can charge going to be bad for the phone over time. I can’t imagine it’s a good thing to let it heat up like that for hours on end, especially with the news that some of the phones heat up quite a bit on their own. It’s a phenomenal piece of technology, but I’d be a little nervous about letting my iPhone 3G go tanning. :)
Check your link Abby. I clicked on the link from my iGoogle feed, and it took me to a malware popup window… careful everyone. Cool gadget though…
Flash, you are right. The number one suggestion on the apple battery page is to keep the battery cool and NEVER leave it in your car. Overheating leads to short life for these batteries.
Flash and shhQuiet, I’m pretty sure the writer meant for people to leave the case charging under the sun during the day and plug the phone to it at night to charge it with green energy. He didn’t mean for people to leave the phone under the sun…
I got one of those from Solar Arcadia and is totally dead after the first charge. I’m trying to contact them with no success.
If you google it you will find other comments about the same issue.
http://ourmaninside.com/2008/10/07/iphone-solar-charger-case/
Don’t waste your money!