The tech gadgets I can afford

How much battery is enough?

The Problem

I ALWAYS try to get a phone which will have a long lasting battery.  I am not always successful.  This lack of success is for 2 main reasons.  The first reason, and my biggest problem, is that I use my phone for virtually everything.  Since my job is in the information technology field, there are all kinds of IT apps on my phone, including such obscure things like databases for computers and, since I work in a Cancer Center, of NCI designated cancer centers.  There are more databases and there were nearly 1100 other apps until I paired it down to just shy of 700!  Anyway, that is the first problem, the second problem is that I like all the bells and whistles.  For instance, you can save a lot of battery, by merely changing your display from colored to black and white.  The phone’s battery will last much longer, but then why did you get it with an Amoled display?

The Solution

So taking those two, fairly problematic, items into account, I decided that the best course of action was to carry around an extra internal battery.  This was for my Samsung Galaxy S5 – which was back in the day when you could actually pop open the back of your phone and put in an extra battery.  When I upgraded (forced to) to a Note5, I was no longer able to open it up to put in a fresh battery.  I did the next best thing, I researched and bought what I now consider to be the best battery out there,

the Flux Portable 10000 mAh battery (pictured in the featured image and below)

This was such a good battery, that I bought one for my daughter and my wife (who both use iphones – shudder)  This battery charges amazingly fast and provided about 4 full charges to my phone.  I would have stayed with this except, for reasons I won’t go into, I had to get a new phone and the Samsung Galaxy S8/S8+ had come out a few weeks previously.  I really wanted that phone.  When I saw that the sale price of the S8 was a full $100 less than the 8+ I ended up buying the 8 (I was buying outright, because Consumer Reports had advised this since carriers were overcharging).  I probably should have gotten the S8+, but either one would have given me the same “problem,” the 8 series phones use a USB-C charging port instead of mini-usb.  For that very reason, the S8 comes with 2 adapters, a USB-C to mini-USB adapter so you can use almost all of the things that you already use that way.  The second adapter is more ingenious, a USB-C to USB adapter, which allows you to plug any USB plug or USB thumbdrive, etc into your phone.

This was great – it meant I could still use the Flux battery with this phone.  There were a couple of problems though.  The first is that somehow the adapter slows the charge time to a crawl. The second was this meant I had to carry the adapter around with me, not a problem, but easy to lose.  I thought, “Hey, Flux may already have something to fix this!”  So I went to the Flux website and found NOTHING.  As you can tell I was displeased.  So I decided to try something else.  I started researching external phone batteries with built-in USB-C connectors.  I found this one from Heloidio:

Heloidio Power Bank with USB Type C Cable,and Built-in AC Plug,5000mAh USB Type C Power Bank

It is 5000 mAh, instead of 10000. It does not charge as fast as the Flux with no adapter, but it charges much faster than the flux with the adapter.  You can recharge it either by using the USB cord built-in or by using the built-in AC plug.  It recharges very quickly.

I really do like this one, but if Flux came out with one with a USB-C connector built-in, I would buy it in a snap.