Kensington Battery Pack and Charger Lithium polymer

Kensington Ultra Portable Battery Pack

Introduction

Since purchasing my iPhone several weeks ago I've been looking for a good quality but not too expensive battery backup to keep my phone up and running for longer. I had an old Belkin tunejuice which although it uses exactly the same connector isn't supported by the iPhone (sneaky Apple), I wanted something similar, that could easily charge my iPhone. A quick search online made it pretty apparent that although there are battery packs on the market none of them are particularly cheap. I originally purchased a cheap chinese clip on batter unit (the type you see for £5 on ebay), and there is a reason they are £5 on ebay, they don't work very well. Giving roughly one full charge, but they quickly pack in, mine only lasted a week and about 5 charges. I'd all but given up as I refused to pay £50 for an expensive battery backup, until a choice visit to PC world revealed the Kensington Ultra Portable battery pack. I'd seen this advertised on Amazon for around £25 but it looked massive in their pictures, on seeing it in PC world I realised it was smakker than the iphone, although still bigger than i'd like, however its price was reduced to clear at £7.49, a bargain!

Assembly

Its not what you'd call a pretty battery pack, its rectangular and has only marginally rounded edges, its quite large at about 10mm shorter than an iphone and 10mm narrower but around the same thickness. On the front of the battery is a grey Kensington logo and a single grey button. Pressing this button illuminates a number of bright blue led dots to signify charge stored. A maximum of 5 lights is 100%, the instruction manual suggests 2 LED's is 40% remaining charge. On the left edge of the battery is mini USB input for charging the battery and a regular USB output for charging your iphone. Also provided with the Kensington battery are the following:

• 1 Mini-USB charge cable
• 1 USB charge plug (with UK and EU pin connector)
• I iPhone charge cable (black)

Use

The Kensington Ultra Portable battery is very simple to use. Firstly you should charge the unit, it will take a few hours for initial charge, I found that my unit was fully discharged on purchase. Once charged you simply plug in the provided iPhone cable (or any iphone cable, I used a £1 retractable one) and your iPhone will recognise the charging source straight away and begin charging.

I've found that the Kensington unit can easily top up my iPhone from 40% to 98% (it says 100% until you unplug but then instantly drops to 98%) in about 1 hour, if you charge when your battery gets to around 40% you will get roughly 2 full charges, if you depleat your iPhone almost completely you will only get 1 full charge. The Kensington Battery pack can be used with ipod Touch, Nano and classic as well as Blackberry, although I haven't tested these. Kensington claim the other devices will charge with far less drain on the battery, however 2 large partial charges for a £7.49 (PC world price) is good going as the iPhone is particularly hard on its battery.
Would I recommend this product?

Yes, it may not be the most portable or pretty iPhone charger but it does work and it has the power to keep you mobile (at least 10 more hours if your a heavy user, or several days if your a light to medium user), if you use a Nano you could be looking at 100 additional hours of use. At the price there is very little on the market to beat it, especially when you consider provided in the box are enough cables and plugs to actually charge your iPhone directly from the mains (saving your precious original iPhone sync cable and iPhone plug).