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Make an iPhone battery last 2 weeks

J

jamied95

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 14, 2009
449
0
Next year I'm going to India for 2 weeks, and I'm not expecting to have any electricity (it's by far the most scary part of the trip!).

I really want to take my iPhone, take some snaps, etc, but I can't see a way of making it last 2 weeks with mild-heavy use - had a look at solar chargers but don't know if they work, and I'd presume a battery pack would have to be massive to work...

Any ideas or advice?
 
Take one of everything to cover your bets as best you can - solar charger, battery charger, etc.
You probably also want to get a cheap compact camera + spare battery to make sure you can at least take photos ..
 
If you're not going to have electricity, are you going to have cell service??
I'd think you'd either need a massive battery pack or, if you can find one, one of those hand-crank chargers. You'll have very strong arms by the end of the trip, though.
 
If you are planning to use airplane mode then you could have every radio and thing turned off to save battery, just taking photos would give you maybe two days? I would give it a trial run sometime soon to see how long your battery would last with airplane mode on and taking photos, so that you know how many 'recharges' you will need to bring along (two days per charge you would need 7 recharges for two weeks). I have never used solar, but i dont think its enough to rely on, because its slow to charge up and because you cant plan for the weather.

They also make those Duracell battery packs that recharge your phone. You could buy a few of those and charge them up well before you leave. I think they would be cheaper than buying 7 of the the iPhone extended battery pack case? Again im not 100% positive on those prices.

Or, get a car battery hooked up to charge overnight. Bring the apparatus with you and find a car battery in India. But be sure to have a good explanation in case the airport security decides to question it :cool:

Have fun!
 
Without electricity and ruling out solar or battery chargers you have seriously ham strung yourself.

If you wanted to take photos, a small camera's charge would last a lot longer.
 
I recently took my iPhone overseas, and with the cell service turned off it'll actually last a respectable amount of time when used purely as a digital camera. Probably not 2 weeks though.

You could take a Holga or an older 35mm camera if you're willing to shoot some film. Those will last forever on a single battery, and the Holga doesn't use any electricity at all. This might be an attractive option if you like to shoot with Hipstamatic or similar apps that mimic these types of cameras.
 
Seven of these would be 150 if they work. if you go light on the battery you may not need all seven and then you could just return what you dont use to walmart. Just do your research and see if its going to work for ya.
 
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No cars around?
A 12V DC charger will do the trick.

Those adapters that use regular AA batteries could work also.

Solar power will be good also, both ways to charge the iPhone directly or to charge the extra batteries.
 
Thanks for the help guys!

I probably should have given a bit of context: I'm going to be in the Himalayas, won't be using my phone as a phone (no signal) and considering we have to dig a hole to go to the toilet, there really is nothing.

I looked at some cheap digi camera, but i was hoping for some higher quality images - I'll buy a few if it comes to it, though.

The other problem is, I have to carry everything I take, so can't really take a car battery!
 
Solar would be the best way. I would actually suggest going on some hiking climbing enthusiast forums. they should have lots of great tips for packing light camera's chargers etc.. actually sounds intresting a trip you will remember for a life time.
 
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I use the solarjoos orange solar charger/battery and it works great. It will charge the phone about 3 times when it has a full charge. It is also waterproof and shockproof. Only down side is its quite costly.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Just take a solar charger and once plugged in power your iPhone off for a quicker charge. Simple!
 
bperrella said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

I use the solarjoos orange solar charger/battery and it works great. It will charge the phone about 3 times when it has a full charge. It is also waterproof and shockproof. Only down side is its quite costly.
Click to expand...

I havent seen that one before. It looks very nice and like it will actually work well. And the point that you can get 3 charges out of a full charge is good because you only need to let it in the sun every few days.

OP, if you can afford that, it looks like the best deal and least amount to carry. Waterproof is a plus too.
 
bperrella said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

I use the solarjoos orange solar charger/battery and it works great. It will charge the phone about 3 times when it has a full charge. It is also waterproof and shockproof. Only down side is its quite costly.
Click to expand...

That looks awesome! How long does it take to charge? [Edit: dayum, you can't get it in the UK]

And the AA battery things look interesting, but I don't know how well they work with iPhones, presumably I'd need like, 28 batteries?
 
Last edited:
jamied95 said:
That looks awesome! How long does it take to charge?

And the AA battery things look interesting, but I don't know how well they work with iPhones, presumably I'd need like, 28 batteries?
Click to expand...

on their site they say 1 hour of sun = 3 hours of talk time.. I use it mainly for my iPad so I can't exactly verify that but it seems right. the best thing about it is that you can leave it in the sun and it will charge its own battery so you could even have it charging hanging from your backpack or something and then plug in the iPhone whenever you're ready. and again, it can take quite a beating haha
 
Why not turn it off when not using it? If you're only using it as a camera, turn it on to take pics, turn it off the rest of the time.
 
You could just take a digital camera and turn the phone off instead, that way the phone battery might last you 2 weeks.

That way, you'll have better quality photo's than the iphone and you'll have enough juice when you get home to call a cab and your friends to tell them what an amazing time you had.
 
Phone Junky said:
Why not turn it off when not using it? If you're only using it as a camera, turn it on to take pics, turn it off the rest of the time.
Click to expand...

Yah. I would say turn it off during the night. But too many power ons and offs during the day drains the battery.

I think those solar chargers are his best bet.
 
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