Anyone have the richard solo battery? I'm thinking of buying one
I have thought about picking that one up. I bought
this Lenmar external battery kit (it sometimes drops below $35 on Amazon - guess they have raised the prices for the holidays) - and it has been very good. It can charge the iPhone from a little over 20% to completely full about twice on a single charge. Plus all the grip that comes with it makes it a universal cell phone and small device charger - it comes with an iPhone/iPod adapter, a mini-USB, a "straight-through"-type adapter and one of those old "copper fang"-type adapters. And you also get a low-profile USB wall outlet and car outlet with the kit. The coolest thing about the Lenmar is that it tends to charge the phone more quickly than a trickle-charge from the Apple adapater or from a laptop USB port. The downsides to the Lenmar are that it really has trouble charging the phone if you allow it to drop into the red before hooking it up. And it is kinda kludgy to carry when charging because the retractable cable's wires are extremely thin and look very delicate.
The Richard Solo 1800, on the other hand, has a few advantages over the Lenmar. You can charge it in series with the iPhone, so basically, you snap the battery onto the iPhone, plug the battery into your wall charger, and the phone and the battery will both fully charge off a single wall connection. The little plastic dock clip looks solid and it should make it much more practical and less kludgy to carry the iPhone+battery while charging. The 1800 has a built-in LED flashlight and laser pointer, which is kinda cool. And I *believe*, though I'm not sure, that the Richard Solo 1800 has more capacity than the Lenmar. The Richard Solo is rated at 5v 1800 mAh while the Lenmar is rated at 5v 7.8Wh. The conversion between milliamp hours and Watt hours is supposed to be (mAh capacity / 1000 ) * voltage, and by that formula, the Richard Solo would be 1.8 * 5 = 9 Wh vs. the 7.8 for the Lenmar. But bear in mind that I am playing way out of my normal ballpark doing electrical unit conversions.
The only downside I see to the Richard Solo would relate to the type of case you have. If you have a full-skin style case that has just a port hole at the bottom for docking, you would have to remove your case in order to "dock" the battery to the iPhone with the plastic clip. That would be a pretty big hassle. You could *probably* plug the battery in through the docking hole without removing the case, but I wouldn't move the two around without the dockng clip being in place because that would seem like a sure-fire way to crack your iPhone's dock port. On the other hand, if you have one of those hard plastic "slider" cases where the bottom third slides off for easy docking, though, that would make it trivial to dock the two devices.
Now, if you're looking for a full-sized power plant for your iPhone, grab one of
these.