solar cell phone chargers

[TonyF]

Anyone have a recommendation or any experience with these?

https://4patriots.com/products/patri...ell-four-packs

Thanks.

[icp4life162005]

Anyone have a recommendation or any experience with these?

https://4patriots.com/products/patri...ell-four-packs

Thanks.

A fool and his money are easily parted.


It's your average $10‐20 china junk that's marked up to a premium "4 patriots".

Heres what I bought and use.
Works as good as every other no name china battery pack. Biggest scam is overselling the battery sizes.
This one is legit.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SYJM8JG...asp_dp_primary

[icp4life162005]

A fool and his money are easily parted.


It's your average $10*20 china junk that's marked up to a premium "4 patriots".

Heres what I bought and use.
Works as good as every other no name china battery pack. Biggest scam is overselling the battery sizes.
This one is legit.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SYJM8JG...asp_dp_primary

Heres a quick link for something similar to the 4patriot, for $16.99 with free prime shipping.
First result for rugger solar charger.

https://www.amazon.com/AMAES-Efficie...7384342&sr=8-2

[Remington788]

I looked at these in the past.
When you do the math, onboard solar panel is so small that it will take 5-7 days of full sun to recharge the battery pack.

[streaker69]

I looked at these in the past.
When you do the math, onboard solar panel is so small that it will take 5-7 days of full sun to recharge the battery pack.

Yup, at 1.5W under the best conditions it's gonna take forever.

[Hawk]

I'm not sure what your intended use is, but I bought one of these for backpacking to keep my phone charged. Solar sucks in Western PA.

Amazon.com: Anker PowerCore 5000 Portable Charger, Ultra-Compact 5000mAh External Battery with Fast-Charging Technology, Power Bank for iPhone, iPad, Samsung Galaxy and More

[streaker69]

Figured I'd show the math just to make it clear.

The panels on those units output 1.5W at around 6VDC. To find the current we divide 1.5/6=.25A or 250mA

The battery in the OP's post is an 8000mA/H. To find the time, and since we're using like units, we can just divide 8000mA / 250mA = 32 hours.

That means you'd need 32 hours of perfect sunlight to fully recharge the battery pack from the supplied panel.

That is of course a perfect model without account for any other losses. It would actually take more than that.

[TonyF]

OK. But in a real life situation, wouldn't (shouldn't) these only be used to "top off" a cell phone battery as opposed to trying to recharge a nearly depleted battery? Unless someone is foolishly using their cell phone for navigation (compass / mapping) and whatever else instead of having acquired a real compass and real maps, this model as suggested by icp4life162005 might be something worth considering.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SYJM8JG...asp_dp_primary

[Driswalds]

Yours is a better bet. With the 3 solar panels your output is 600mA

Solar charging: 5.5V=600mA Input:5.0V=2.0A(Typ)

It would still take 33 hours to fully charge yours from dead but you have a much bigger battery at 20000mA. It would charge that small battery in 13 hours.

[streaker69]

OK. But in a real life situation, wouldn't (shouldn't) these only be used to "top off" a cell phone battery as opposed to trying to recharge a nearly depleted battery? Unless someone is foolishly using their cell phone for navigation (compass / mapping) and whatever else instead of having acquired a real compass and real maps, this model as suggested by icp4life162005 might be something worth considering.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SYJM8JG...asp_dp_primary

Have you seen who's president? There's a lot of foolish people out there.

Let's assume perfect conditions:

3 Panels is now 1.5W@6V: 4.5/6=750ma

You need to recharge your phone from the device and that uses 2000ma.

2000ma / 750ma = 2.67 hours of perfect sunlight to recover the energy lost by charging.

I just want people to realize the marketing is all under perfect conditions, something that rarely happens when you're outdoors. The panels would need to be stationary under full sun to charge properly. That means you can't be under tree cover, you can't be hiking with it hanging off your bag and you'd have to adjust it's angle to the sun while it's charging.

Maybe you kids do things differently than when I backpacked in my teens. But in my day we used to hike during the day, and sleep at night. We were never still for 2.67 hours during the day. Those things may be fine for stationary camping, but actual real hiking, not so much.