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Portable Smartphone Compact Battery Charger

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Mar 25, 2014
Category: Gifts and Gadgets

My wife’s employer insisted she have the latest iPhone — not a terrible order, given that the company was buying it for her — which is how the child got a hand-me-down, barely used iPhone 5.

I soldiered on with a iPhone 4, protected by a cheap rubber case decorated with the logo of a company I’ve never heard of. (Can you guess why? Hint: It was free.)

I soon noticed two new phenomena.

1) When my phone was visible, the child was ashamed to be seen with me. Well, I thought, she’s now 12. This was to be expected.

2) My iPhone was losing battery charge with remarkable speed. Like: by the time I got to the corner, I had to return home to recharge. Okay, not that dire. But there was a noticeable change.

Nothing to do about the child’s disdain. But the iPhone battery? I was, I learned, not the only iPhone 4 owner who’d noticed a change soon after Apple introduced a new model.

In The New York Times, Catherine Rampell stepped right up to the suspicion that this was deliberate:

At first, I thought it was my imagination. Around the time the iPhone 5S and 5C were released, in September, I noticed that my sad old iPhone 4 was becoming a lot more sluggish. The battery was starting to run down much faster, too. But the same thing seemed to be happening to a lot of people who, like me, swear by their Apple products. When I called tech analysts, they said that the new operating system (iOS 7) being pushed out to existing users was making older models unbearably slow. Apple phone batteries, which have a finite number of charges in them to begin with, were drained by the new software. So I could pay Apple $79 to replace the battery, or perhaps spend 20 bucks more for an iPhone 5C. It seemed like Apple was sending me a not-so-subtle message to upgrade.

The Times piece inspired two kinds of responses. One was that Steve Jobs, a tech visionary, was also a predatory capitalist who addicted us to devices that regularly became obsolete. The other was technical and above my pay grade, but I got the idea that I shouldn’t upgrade my iPhone 4 to the new operating system if I hoped to get beyond the corner. Or I should just surrender to the predatory capitalist and buy the iPhone 5.

Whatever your phone, there’s a simple fix: a portable charger.

This lipstick-sized device takes about 6 hours to charge and delivers enough juice for 1-2 charges of your phone. It works on many phones: the iPhone 5, 4, 4S, 3G and 3GS, the Galaxy S5, S4, S3, Note 3, Nexus 4, HTC One, Nokia Lumia 520, 1020 and “most other” Smartphones. It comes in blue, silver, black and pink. Yes, you can use your phone while you’re charging it. [To buy the Anker portable battery charger from Amazon, click here.]

There’s a kind of peace now in our lives. The child’s marathon sessions of Minecraft no longer come to an end with a sudden insistence that I hand over my disgusting iPhone. In the jungle, I was never at the mercy of monkeys, snakes or the predators at Apple.

What Andrew Tobias wrote all those years ago is forever true: You buy a luxury item, it becomes essential, and then it’s a necessity.

Color TV. The microwave. The Smartphone.

And, now, if you are an on-the-go phone user with no access to a cigarette lighter car charger or a computer or an electrical outlet, one more necessity — the portable charger.