Festival season’s well underway now and, like many of you probably were too, I was off enjoying the sunshine at Glasto last week. If you were there too then let me know what your favourite bit was in the comments below – I thought Muse were amazing!
Getting away from things for a bit is always good but I like to be able to touch base with things back home when I want to, so it’s pretty important to me that my phone stays charged up throughout the weekend. That’s without all the other stuff you use a high end smart phone for – taking pictures of yourself posing with celebs, updating your twitter to brag about all the amazing bands you’ve seen and, of course, crawling around your tent (probably drunk) in the middle of the night using your phone as a torch.
So I took the Solar Power Sleeve Charging Case for the iPhone with me to try out. I was a bit skeptical at first, worrying that it’d pour it down the whole time and the case would be useless, but since it turned out to be the hottest weekend of the year I had nothing to worry about! If you don’t have an iPhone, there are plenty of other universal solar chargers available.
The Solar iPhone charger is a great idea as well as being greener and more environmentally friendly than your average charger, which is a big bonus, especially at a festival full of hippies. Its easy to slide on and although it doesn’t look as elegant as the iPhone itself, it’s still pretty cool looking. One thing I really appreciated was that it barely adds any bulk or weight to the phone, since it would’ve been a bit of a pain to carry around in my pocket the whole time if it had.
The Solar charger provides a great boost to your battery power, keeping it topped up whilst you’re out and about, which makes it ideal for day trips and camping trips. It doesn’t need to be placed in direct sunlight so I found it was still pretty effective in the shade, although of course the sunnier it is the greater the power! You can also plug a mini USB cable into the bottom of the solar charger and charge it via computer, mains or car adapter, so it’s pretty versatile and can be used wherever you are.
Hopefully we’ll see versions coming out to use as an iPhone 4 case and maybe even an iPad case soon enough, though I’m not sure quite how sunny it’d need to be to power a whole iPad! All in all I thought this was a brill gadget, and it was pretty useful when I managed to lose track of the people I came with and couldn’t remember whether we’d agreed to meet a) next to the portaloos or b) opposite the burger bar.
See more iPhone 4 accessories.