Features:
Charge the Battery pack by AC Charger (AC110 or USB) for 7.5 hours
Charge the battery pack by Solar Cell for 14 hours
When the 2600 mAh lithium battery is charged, you can use it to power your mobile phone, digital camera, mp3 player, or video player.
Solar panel producing 0.7 Watts
Input DC 5 V 500 mAh
Output DC 5.5V 550 mAh
Li-ion Battery: 2600 mAh
Read this article about putting my BlackBerry Curve on a solar diet using the S-2600P
Putting My BlackBerry Curve on a 1-Week Solar Power Diet.
I have carried our S-2600P: Solar Power Battery Charger for approximately 4 months now and I had conducted many preliminary tests on the product. This week I will be doing a week long test by keeping my Blackberry Curve only on solar power from this unit. Here is the plan:
Include a S-2600P: Solar Power Battery Charger on my dashboard to charge the unit. Only charge my Blackberry Curve by the S-2600P and nothing else. Monitor the results and see how practical it is to power my Blackberry by Solar all the time.
My first day started last friday. I had tossed out my blackberry AC charger and added the S-2600P into my car dash.
So the basics of this unit is as follows:
The S-2600P is a 2600 mAh lithium ion battery pack that you can charge by solar power or by AC power via USB. The BlackBerry Curve 8300 that I use is the Pale Gold Curve from T-Mobile which as WIFI, Bluetooth, and Edge. For the purpose of this experiment, I only have Edge connections on and WIFI off as well as Bluetooth off.
I started my experiment on Friday August 1st, 2008. First thing first, I stopped charging my Blackberry Curve and placed a S-2600P on my car dash.
I use my Blackberry a lot as I collect emails from 4 different emails account including the goldengadget emails. By Saturday about 8:45 pm, my Blackberry was blinking its green light complaining of low battery. My S-2600P Solar Power Charger has been sitting on my dash for about a day and a half and getting sunlight basically on the first half on Saturday between 9:00 am - 1:00 pm (4 hours of solar charge). I had my doubts as to whether the S-2600P had gotten enough sun to fully charge my battery, so I just left my Blackberry in the car connected to the S-2600P. I got back into my car at midnight and my Blackberry Curve was fully charged. I could not tell whether the solar power pack was completely drained but I know that my Blackberry stopped receiving a charge and was currently full power.
The weekend is now over and my Blackberry still has half its power. My S-2600P is on my car dash and will be receiving plenty of sunlight as I leave it parked outside from 9:00am - 5:00 pm (8 hours). This should be sufficient time to fully charge the S-2600P: Solar Power charger. When I leave work, I expect my Blackberry to have about half its power left and I will start charging it on my S-2600P while I go climb from 6:00 pm to 10:30 pm.
August 5th, 2008
So my solar unit charged itself while my car was parked out of the office and I used it to charge my Blackberry Curve while I climbed. When I went back to my car, my blackberry was almost max charged (the very last bar was kind of faded) but my S-2600P: Solar Battery Charger seems to be completely drained. I tried to plug it in and out of the blackberry just to see if i can get a little more juice out of it but it did not respond. I was kind of worried that the S-2600P was completely shot so I took it home and plugged it into my USB port to make sure the unit was still working. Plugged it in and the S-2600P charging indicator light came back on. I unplugged it and threw the unit back in my car. This morning on my way to work, I plugged my Curve into the solar charger and just let it soak up the sun. BlackBerry has 3/4 of it battery and the S-2600P is once again outside soaking up the sun.
Funny thing is when I had my solar charger at the climbing gym, people were interested but they thought it was broken because the S-2600P uses the Poly-Crystalline solar cell which looks shattered but in fact gives off more power. I'll keep this updated till the weekend. Here is a pic of my S-2600P charging my blackberry this morning:
We'll see how it holds up for the rest of the week.
August 6th, 2008
My blackberry is down to 3 bars of power (out of 5 bars) and I'm gonna bring my solar charger into my office and charge my blackberry. I started charging it at 10:15 am and the solar charger is doing fine. I think i will have my blackberry back to full power by noon. I'll keep this article updated.
Ok so it is now 11:49am and my Blackberry is fully charged. It took approx. 1 hr and 15 min to replenish my blackberry of 2 bars of power...not bad. however, there is one drawback that i noticed. The solar power pack will continue to give power to my blackberry even after it has been fully charged. I believe this is the same thing as having your blackberry plugged in as the blackberry will choose to be powered by the external battery instead of its own internal battery. Because of this, I do not recommend leaving your solar power pack plugged into your blackberry unattended as it will completely drain your solar power pack and you will have to recharge your solar power pack back from zero. In the meantime, I will toss this solar charger back on my car dash and let it recharge itself.
August 7th, 2008
It is 11:11am and I am starting to get bored of this project as I realize that basically my blackberry will use up 2 bars of power per day and then my S-2600P solar charger will replenish it in the next 1-2 hours. My phone is charging now and i'm pretty sure it will be fully charged before 1 pm. I will continue this project till August 11th just to commit to the week but the S-2600P works great and honestly I'll probably end up charging my blackberry this way as it does not disrupt my phone usage and I even have extra power along with me in the car.
Ok it is now 12:27pm, approximately 1 hr and 16 min. later and my blackberry curve is back to full charge. I am dropping off my S-2600P back into my car dash now so it can replenish itself.
August 8th, 2008
Hey the Olympics just kicked off and my blackberry is still only being charged by solar power with no problem. once again...it is 11 ish and my Blackberry has only used up 1 bar of power. I am charging it again with the S-2600P solar power pack and it works...what more can i say. now lets see how this thing holds up through the weekend and maybe i'll actually have some interesting updates on monday.
August 11th, 2008
My last weekend with the S-2600P did turn up some surprises so here goes...
First of all, I did not charge my phone by any means other than using the S-2600P powered by the sun for approximately 7-8 days. The last weekend with the S-2600P, I finally ran out of power. I used my blackberry curve on friday, saturday, and half day sunday till my phone only had 1 bar of power left. I then went to my car and got the S-2600P solar power pack to charge my phone. I left it in my room to charge and 1-2 hours later I came back to check on it and the blackberry curve had been charged to 4 bars (1 bar short of full) and my S-2600P has been completely drained. I was mildly disappointed but I had not drive my car since friday and therefore my S-2600P has not been replenished for 2 1/2 days. I placed the S-2600P back on my car dash and has been recharging.
This concludes my week of solar for my Blackberry. In my week long experiment with the blackberry, I found the S-2600P to provide ample power to keep my Blackberry charged throughout the week.
Pros:
+ solar charging all day everyday even when my phone was not connected
+ internal battery held enough charge to fill up my blackberry everyday
+ multiple plug-in options as it includes a female USB plug so I even charged my Ibiza Rhapsody when I was low on power
Cons:
- the metallic body of the S-2600P made it extremely hot after a few hours under the sun
- no suction cup or holder of any sorts (I just jammed it in my car dash)
In my opinion I believe the S-2600P solar battery charger is a great product especially if you are traveling a lot. As a day to day solar charger for my blackberry, I found it sufficient and provided enough power. But taking the product in and out of my car was inconvenient and if you do wish to power your phone by only solar, I recommend keeping the S-2600P at home near a window as that will provide sun shine everyday and you do not have to worry about not getting enough sun (recommend south facing window).
UPDATE
August 13th, 2008
I have recently tested the S-2600P: 2600 mAh Solar Battery Charger on my Ibiza Rhapsody as well as on a Nokia 5300 music express phone and an iPOD Nano 3 (new little one with video). Here are some pictures.
