Being mobile means most of the time you are away from the power outlet. You must have a power supply that can last as long as you are out in the field.
Unfortunately, battery life isn’t always the best feature of our mobile devices like smartphones. We either need to buy expensive long life batteries or stay in places that have available power outlets.
Fortunately, Kodak came out with a very useful and affordable alternative power source for us, the Kodak Portable Charger KP100-C+2 kit.
The kit is a combination of an AC Charging Base and an external Power Pack. If your device can be charged from a USB port, then you can use the Kodak Portable Charger KP100-C+2 Power Pack as power supply.

Here’s a list of included items in the kit:

1. AC Charging base – this charges your device through a USB and it also charges the Power Pack. This charging base needs to be connected to the power outlet.
2. Power Pack – this is the external battery. It can charge your devices from its USB port.
3. Two Rechargeable AA batteries – each rated at 2400mAh.
4. Power Cord
5. User guide

Advantages

Portable - this unit is small enough to fit in you laptop bag. If you just take the Power Pack it becomes smaller.

Reusable - the fact that it uses rechargeable batteries makes it reusable again and again.

Replaceable batteries – unlike some external battery packs with built-in batteries, the Kodak Portable Charger KP100-C+2 uses rechargeable AA batteries that you can replace anytime.

Affordable - at USD11.50, this unit only cost as much as 4 cups of Frappuccino in Starbucks.

Real-life Performance

The packaging of the kit claims being able to give up to an additional 40 hours of charge for your devices. That would mean almost 2 days of additional power to your device.

I tested this with my Motorola Milestone Android smartphone. To get a base reading of how long my smartphone usually lasts, I fully charged it, used 3G Internet only (no wifi), watched a couple of movies, and listened to music till the battery emptied.

I then connected it to the Power Pack and turned it on. Again I used the phone and timed how long it will survive with the Power Pack.

And here are the results:

Motorola Milestone with default battery: 7 hours 40minutes

Motorola Milestone with Power Pack: 10 hours and 38 minutes.

More than 10 hours of additional power is not bad. And, this is from when the phone’s battery was empty. The phone was continuously being charged until the Power Pack emptied.  What’s nice about this is if I wanted to continue charging the phone, I can just replace the batteries with freshly charged ones.

Personal Practical Uses

I’ve been using the Kodak Portable Charger for a couple of weeks now.  Here are some of the ways I use it:

1. I use my Android 2.2 phone as Wife hotspot, and the Kodak Portable Charger KP100-C+2 gives the phone extra power to last longer. This is very important since using 3G drains the battery fast.
2. When I want longer MP3 playback outdoors, this kit is a good solution.
3. I use the Power Pack as additional backup battery for my Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera.
4. I use the Power Pack to charge my mobile phones. I have USB Power Tips that let me charge my 2 Myphone dual SIM phones and Android phone.

Conclusion

As we become more mobile with our electronic gadgets, we face the “battery empty” problem more often.
The Kodak Portable Charger KP100-C+2 is an affordable and practical solution for that problem. With its price, there’s no longer an excuse not to get one even if you already have one. In fact I’m ordering one these kits again.
I don’t know where to get it here in the Philippines, but I got mine from Amazon.com. To know how I got it shipped fast and affordable, read my article here.

Do you think this kit will be helpful to you? Le me know what you think by commenting below.

Photos of the product

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