5 posts tagged “battery”

The Proporta goody is basically a 3400 mAh Li-Ion battery that produces 5.5V for recharging a device on-the-go. I bought the Travel Survival Kit edition. It comes with a large set of connectors set for charging devices and solutions for charging the Proporta itself. There are charging connector tips for Nokia, Sony Ericsson, micro-, mini- and regular-USB and more).  The primairy solutions to to charge the Proporta are  car, USB and wallsocket. But then anything that produces 5 V could be USB ;-).  In this review I will touch:

• Why a 3400mAh battery-based recharger?
• Unboxing the Proporta and a line-up of  the content
• Charging/decharging tests with the N95
• Concluding remarks and a quick summary of the results

Skip ahead if you don't want to read my intermediate glyph natterings.

The 3400mAh looks promising to charge the 950 mAh N95 battery at least twice or more depending on charging efficiency (tested!, see below). In my day to day life however the battery capacity of the N95 is more than sufficient. Snapshots and video recordings are sparse and mostly short. Occasions (time and availability) to recharge the phone are bountiful. I.e. satellite navigation always has a car charger nearby and nowadays the new v20 firmware gives me about 20% more usage of the battery capacity.

Why then a 3400mAh Li-Ion battery-based recharger?

Obviously not as a survival kit. Outdoorshop don't sell them. They sell emergency chargers. Dynamo-operated break-a-sweat-to-call-a-few-minutes emergency chargers or a single AA-battery based recharger like the earlier reviewed lipstick-sized b-powered. They are compact, work anytime and are basically store-and-forget. A proper AA battery has a shelf life of at least 7 years.

But there are occasions when I need planned extra power. Here the 3400 mAh's of Proporta comes and kicks donkey. I can extend my N95's working time to use those terrific power hungry functions of the N95 to the MAX. The Proporta can turn my N95 into a video recorder that will last hours, geo-tag most of a day, sat-nav an unhealty driving time in my car and  let me cross Europe in a train while working from 'home' over 3G. And it can charge the N95 while it is on my belt!

Unpacking the Proporta Travel Survival Kit

Although there were several other brands to choose from, Proporta was reported by several sources (Ocifant i.e.) to work well with the N95 and had a pleasant form factor. I ordered it directly from Proporta and they shipped it in an simple bubble-lined envelope. As a result the box was deformed and part of the packaged items had already spilled into the envelope.

Topleft is the mini-usb to usb-cable used for charging the 3400 mAh Proporta battery lying to the right of it. The Proporta really feels good and solid for a thing with a plastic casing. There are slight ridges on the ends of the battery that might be prone to breaking. Beveled edges would be preferable. The usb-cable can be connected to a USB port or the Proporta wallcharging unit (below the cable) or car charging adaptor (southwest of cable). In the picture the 220V pin-adapter as used in most of West-Europe is mounted on the wall charging unit.

The three centerpieces on the lower row are the other pin-adapters for the wall-charging unit. They are easily switched, and snap with a satisfying click nicely tight onto the wall-charger. A black pouch to hold all goodies was included in the box.

Bottom right is the charging cable with at one side the required usb-connector for the Proporta and on top a hollow tip on which the different adapter tips are mounted. These adapter tips lie right of the wall charging unit in the picture. From right to left, mini Nokia (N95 i.e.), Sony Ericsson (W800i i.e.), older Nokia (6250 i.e.),  micro-usb tip and as last an unknown iPod connector. See a close-up picture on the right.

Charging and decharging tests

First I charged the Proporta fully. Next was to drain the N95. I can drain my N95 by recording about 75 minutes of video. To drain properly I go for 2 battery empty warnings before considering it 'empty'. The second beep is when the battery has first cooled a bit to get a proper battery empty reading. I then hook the N95 to the Proporta and charge until full. Drain the N95 again, recharge.. etc. Interesting was that the Proporta noted when the N95 stopped charging and switched of it's charging current. By doing this it saves it's battery power by not having the voltage converter run needless. Charging the N95 to battery-full beep takes roughly 1,5 hours, comparable with the time needed using Nokia wall-charger.

I could recharge the N95 battery 2 times until the battery-full-beep and managed 3 power bars from the 8 on the third try. This was measured to be equal to about 25 minutes and 51 seconds of video recording. Let's call the number of M95 charges it 2.3 times for all practical purposes. Now 2.3 times means that about 64% of the 3400 mAh ended up in my N95. Which is rather as meaningless as 3400 mAh for a statement. 2.3 times is the prime number here! Note also my N95's battery is only from April 2007 and should still be in pretty good shape.

Comparing and analyzing the results

First things first. The Proporta site states incorrectly that it should recharge the N95 3.58 times where it is in fact a mere 2.3 times. Yeah 3400/950 = 3.58 rounded up, but that's not a responsible technical guess. I'll contact Proporta and ask them for a response. Continuing however, the Proporta's charging efficiency of 64 56% looks much better than the best charging efficiency of the b-powered stick (14% on NiMH) in an earlier test I did. Most likely this is because the Proporta's native battery voltage is higher than an AA-battery and there is less loss in voltage conversion.

The Proporta and a fully charged BL-5F battery can turn my N95 into a video recorder that will last 4 hours, geo tag most of a waking day, sat nav me 6.3 hours and  let me cross Europe in a train while you are working from 'home' over 3G. And yes, it can charge the N95 while it is on my belt. Other types of solutions are the Solio hybrid recharger (Solar cell and Li-Ion battery based). The local Apple store sells them now and they seem a good idea. Sadly there is about 6 times less light in Europe than in Central Africa where you need about 6-8 hours of sunlight to fully charge your 950 mAh battery of the N95. Which means solar cells are mostly dead weight.

The main problem however is that the Solio Classic can store only up to 1600 mAh and the Solio Portable Hybrid a mere useless 1000 mAh. This might suffice for recharging a simple mp3 player, but mobile phones are something completely different. Assuming a similar charging efficiency of 56% the Solio classic could actually charge my N95 classic, or a N82 almost a single time. The Proporta gives more than double the power of the Solio Classic with a smaller and more versatile form factor.
 

Conclusions

The Proporta can recharge your N95 up to 2.3 times. It's charging speed is comparable with Nokia's wall-charger, taking roughly 1,5 hours to get your N95 from empty to the battery-full beep. Together with a fully charged BL-5F battery the Proporta can turn my N95 into a video recorder that will last 4 hours, geo tag most of a waking day, sat nav me 6.3 hours or let me cross Europe in a train while from 'home' over 3G. And yes it gives a donkey kicking talk time. Typical most Lithium Ion batteries have a charge loss of 20% when stored for a year at 25 deg. Celsius. So one can actually charge and forget it until there is need to take it with one. The Proporta takes about 5-6 hours to get recharged, meaning it will recharge in your sleep period ;-)

Its flat design allows one carry it discretely in a pocket. From that pocket it can charge the N95 unobtrusively during movie making, photo taking or simply while carried on the belt. As a battery extender it's simply great and I prefere it for civilized use to a hybrid battery charger like the Solio. The power output of the the Solio's solar cells are to small for the power demands of a modern smart phone. The Solio seems more useful for simple mp3 players that could run a full day on a single AAA battery. I.e. the new solar cell bluetooth headset from Iqua seems a perfect application of solar cells, as was the case for my old calculator. I have two regrets, the Proporta does not charge the promised 3.58 times and in my case Proporta's shipping packaging was substandard.

The Proporta charger does not make a good emergency charger. For one it has too much battery capacity for an emergency battery charger. I would ever be tempted to use part of that charge for non-emergency use and by accident drain it. Second, there is no indicator of remaining battery capacity nor is there a switch that gives access to a special last reserve to make that one life-saving call or charge. The Proporta really feels good and solid for a thing with a plastic casing, it is however not designed for the rough and tumble I consider required for my outdoor and survival goodies. Anything tagged survival should match the 8G shock resistance and IPX-7 of my Garmin or for example keep par with Casio's latest G’zOne mobile phone models.

Looking for an real emergency charger that is carry and forget for that one life saving call? Buy a dynamo-operated  break-a-sweat-to-call-a-few-minutes emergency charger in an outdoor shop. Or even a lipstick-sized single AA-battery based charger like the b-powered.

Having said all that, the Proporta fits my purpose as an on-the-go charger for surviving powerhungry daytrips and for spanning a couple of days without a garanteed hookup with a power outlet. And it has a optimal charging time of my N95.

Update Jan 15, 2008 I received Proporta's respons: We stated that when charging any device the charging times and amount can change from one persons device to another's. We state on our website that this is the maximum amount of charges and when we tested the N95 this is what we found. There are many different factors that effect this, meaning, that it will always vary but it can recharge the N95 up to a maximum of 3.58 times.

Author's comment: Proporta states on their website that you could divide their 3400 mAh by the battery capacity of your device to calculate the possible number of charges. The N95 has a battery capacity of 950 mAh leading to a rounded up number of 3.58 times. Since my battery was not drained completely but drained until the battery low warning it required a charge less than 950 mAh (1 power bar left). The actual number of possible charges should then be about 4.10 times for 831.25 mAh. However I measured 2.3 times. A significant difference.

Why then? The Proporta produces 5.5 Volt. Lithium Ion batteries however have an average voltage of 3.6-4.0 Volt depending on Li-Ion battery type. So some voltage conversion occurs in the Proporta to 5.5 Volt (typical at 80-90%) and again in the N95 from 5.5 V to the 4.2 V required to charge the 3.7 V BL-5F Li-Ion battery. Now 2.3 charges * 831 mAh (7 bars) =  1911 mAh transferred from the Proporta to the N95 until it was empty. Charging efficiency = 56%. Assuming that the Nokia simply uses a voltage divider to generate 4.2 volt from 5.5. The calculated charging efficiency would be 80% * 4.2/5.5 = 61% which translates into a theoretical estimate of 2.5 charges against a measured 2.3 times.

With 831 mAh being a very inaccurate estimate my measured values seem indeed a very reasonable result in contrary to Proporta's. The low charging efficiency of the N95 seems to correspond with the stated power consumption on its wall charger and charging time. It is unlikely that any batterybased charger will have a charge efficiency of more that 64% for the N95. Proporta however states they actually tested charging the N95 and in light of my results their statement and their results are most likely in error.

Feel free to comment...

Scientists in cooperation with the US Air Force Research Laboratory developped so-called bètavoltaïsche cells. The cells are constructed using semiconductors and radioisotopes as the energy source. The batteries can be small and thin. The reaction is non-thermal, allowing devices to run much cooler than when lithium-ion powered. Radioactivity should not be more than the typical smokealarm sensor. The produced radioactive tritium byproduct can be neutralized with a siliciumconnection.  Besides tritium is in its low concentrations considered harmless as its being used in watches for dial illumination. The batteries could be on store shelves in 2 to 3 years. In example a laptop should work for 30 years on such a battery without needing a recharge.

Now, finally a powersource that outlasts the economical lifetime of my N95! Let's rock!

Read more at Next Energy News!

B-powered is a compact and small emergency battery charger running from a single AA battery.It is hardly larger than the AA battery itself and suposedly adds about 240 mAh to your phone battery charge or to call upto 3 hours on the phone. It seems the perfect companion allowing you to go the distance without worrying to get in a tight spot because you drained the phone battery all the way. Got me one, thus time to test it!

The first picture shows the package. One buys the b-powered stick and the connector required for your phone separately. Also a led-light can plug-in in the b-powered stick is availabe. The b-powered storage box holds the b-powered stick (containing an AA-battery), a second spare AA-battery, the led light and my N95 connector. The connector is available, but not at the shop were I bought it so I built my own ;-)

The built quality is nice. The stick is made of sturdy feeling metal, with a metallic looking plastic top that has a solid feel to it. (right side of the stick in box). The main question does it work and how well does it work? It is specified to give up to 3 hours of talktime extension and capable to charge you phone battery above 70% of its capacity.  A single AA cell should add about 240 mAh to the battery.

The alkaline test:

For testing I wanted to drain my phone battery until the low battery warning popup appeared, the quickest way for this is to record video for an hour. Then I had 1 powerbar indicated on the phone. I put a Duracel alkaline AA battery in the stick powerstick and connected it to the phone. About an hour later it quit charging and had added  2 powerbars from the 8 to the phone battery indicator, indicating a total of 3 bars. If this is indeed 1/4 of the battery capacity, about 240 mAh is added.The powerstick casing got warm during the charging indicating that the AA battery was heating up due to the large powerdrain. Alkaline batteries can deliver upto 3000mAh if you extract the power slowly over a long period. During fast discharges however the internal resistance becomes a factor and most of the power can actually be converted to heat inside the battery. However performance was as specified.

The drained alkaline battery registered in my Garmin e-Trex C as 75% empty. Open contact voltage dropped from 1.6 V before charging to 1.25 Volts after charging the N95 with 2 extra powerbars. Open contact is not the best way to measure the powerdischarge but I did not wanted to dismantle my powerstick. Send me one for free and I'll be happy to do the test proper ;-) I put in a fresh alkaline in the powerstick and started charging again. That only added one more powerbar to the N95's battery status indicator. So I played a bit of video quickly reducing the battery status indicator back to 3 power bars again.

The NiMH test:

The powerstick should also be able to cope with rechargable batteries. I took two fully charged NiMH rechargables of  2500 mAh. Loaded one into the stick and started charging again (3 powerbars on the display). After charging ended it had added 5 bars to the phone and the battery indicator showed the full 8 bars. However I did not get the battery full beep. The powerstick kept cool during the charging indicating that the NiMH battery actually copes more efficiently with large powerdrains than alkaline ones. One should know however that rechargable NiMH loose power over time even when not used and the larger the capacity the faster the batteries loose power. After a week the 2500 mAh NiMH charged batteries are useless. Also of interest is that charging becomes less efficient with as the phone battery gets slowly charged. The NiMH battery performed excellent compared to the alkaline. The NiMH battery dropped its open contact voltage from 1.37 Volt to 1.22Volt.

Still I had not yet got a battery-full beep, so there was more charging to do. It took another 2500mAh NiMH and partly a 2300 NiMH battery (ran out of charged 2500 mAh NiMH's) until I got my battery-full signal. Going for the full battery signal is very inefficient. Since I did not measure the actual power drain on the AA battery compared to the increase of the N95's battery capacity there is plenty room for discussion about the results. Still, enough is known about batteries and charging to draw some conclusions.

Conclusions:

The b-powered works as advertised. At best it can roughly add a 60% of battery charge to the BL-5F in your N95 using a single  2500 mAh rechargable NiMH's or rougly 25% at best of the BL-5F battery capacity using a single longlife alkaline. If you do use alkalines buy the kind that are designed for large power drain, not the ones for long term but low power, as in your kitchen clock. It is best to charge the phone's battery when it is at low power. Topping off the phone's battery is very inefficient.

Of course the phone can draw power directly from the b-powered stick. Waiting for the charging to finished is not required nor practical. Comparable products deliver currents from 240 mA up to 420mA maximum. The charge time versus battery added charge of my alkaline and NiMH tests fall in that range. Thus the b-powered stick is unusable as a contineous powersource for videorecording. For this a power source or charger should deliver do about 800-900 mA (when connected). Satnav takes about 480mA. A high capacity NiMH cell could probabely run satnav for roughly 1 hour and a quarter with a bit of support of the phone's battery.

If you want small as small gets the b-powered seems an excellent backup charging solution. It is hardly larger than than the AA-battery itself. Works on the most widely available battery. However if you plan to take the complete storage box with you on trips, know that the storage box is only slighty smaller than the solarcell equipped lithium battery based Solio recharger. It is probabely larger than most other lithium-ion battery based backup chargers too. The b-powered however does not need the sun or a power-outlet. Any AA-battery widely available even at remote locations around world will work.

One question pops up though: How well does the b-powered and the N95 work at low temperatures? The tests were at a comfortable temperature of 22 degrees Celsius.

12-1-2008, updated spelling.

Most people seem to be unaware of the difference in powerconsumption between wifi and UMTS, especially in reference to TruPhone, GizmoProject or Fring.

I noted earlier that I can have TruPhone connected for several hours without a single powerbar dropping on my phone. Other people however report otherwise. Surely their phones are not broken :-P. Also there is the question of difference of powerusage between Fring with its own SIP-stack and others like Gizmo or TruPhone which use the in-built SIP-stack, although perhaps with different compressions.

So I tested today fring at work, logged on for 5 hours and 39 minutes using wifi. Left my phone to its own and worked ;-) And yes it was also online via GSM, reception was 3 bars on the 1800 MHz network. Would't miss my calls. The connections figures are

Signal Strength: 97-100%
TX-power 100mW
Transmit/Receive: 2.14MB/89.27kB

After more than 5 hours not a single powerbar dropped! Some easy calculations on the battery capacity versus wifi power gives some interesting numbers. A contineous powerdrain of 100mW on a fully charged battery should last about 28 hours until it is completely drained, assuming the phone draws otherwise none. And with a standby time of >228 hours this is comparatively so. Power efficiency certainly would be less than 100% but then the wifi is never contineously used at that moment to its full. The transmit/receive is less than 2.3 MB in total a fraction of the possible data amount at contineous transmission. Standby should really outlast the 28 hours several factors even considering some cpu-load for the whole action. It can hardly be more than the drain on the phone for regular calls. How then explain these huge powerdrains other people complain about?

Wifi goes up to 100mW worst case.  Running Voice calls over GSM, GPRS or UMTS however requires far larger power transmissions than wifi. It will take anything from a tiny 1 mW  up to nearly 1 Watt depending on distance to the groundstation. 1 Watt versus 100 mW would drain your battery about 10 times faster! Resulting in 2.8 hours and that number happens to be very close to the N95's WCDMA talktime as specified by Nokia ;-) So yes, there goes the power. Looking at one of my earlier blogs about battery life of the N95. The figures for the P990i show that UTMS and GPRS even have a far larger power demand than voice GSM. Mostly because they don't wat to drop some bits and bytes. Where as a voice call over GSM doesn't care to much about it.

The trick is to use SIP and InstantMessaging when you are stationairy near a wifi-point. Or very close to a cell station!

Make sure you have read my post: Battery life of the n95, the facts.

Hi Folks,

The discussion of battery life for the N95 is one of te larger ones on the internet. I collected some testdate of the battery life of the N95 for music play, video play and gps standby from different test all over the internet and will be giving an overview of the results here. I invite you to draw your own conclusions after the facts.

If you are a Geek and want to play with your new toy and all it's features, tv-out, wifi, music and gaming al at once. I am sure the power just seems to evaporate. In fact, having a buggy application running contineous in the background, can really drain you power  seemingly without reason. This was valid for my old P900 and is still the case with the N95. A competent taskmanager to hunt down those badly written programs is regrettable still not a standard part of the Symbian OS. It is very interesting to see the processor capacity some socalled non-active programs use... However let's look at the real facts collected with Google ;-):

Standby and TalkTime:

Specifications of Nokia for the N95:

• Battery: Nokia Battery (BL-5F) 950mAH
• Talk time: up to 160min (WCDMA), up to 240 min (GSM)*
• Stand-by time: up to 200 hours (WCDMA), up to 225 hours (GSM) *

Specifications for the N80i:

• Battery BP-5B 860 mAH
  
• Talk time: upto 180 minutes
• Stand-by time: upto 192 hours

To compare it to the very nice Run-of the-Mill cellphone, the w800i, a camera/music phone without the smart part. The specifications from SonyEricsson:

• Battery BST-37, 900 mAH
• Talk time: 9 hours
• Stand-by time: 400 hours.

Several people on the internet actually mention a talktime between 7.5 to 10 hours talktime. The values seem to be exceptionally high but reliable. The same for the music play time. I'll get back on that later. Let's take a look at the P990i. The phone that should have been the N95, but wasn't. According to SonyEricsson it boasts:

• Battery BST-33, 900 mAH
  
• UMTS talk 3 hours, standby 300 hours
• GSM talk 9 hours, standby 340 hours.

My first observation is the difference between UMTS and GSM looks shocking (P990i). However getting back to the talktime and standby time. The N95 has seemingly far lower standby and talktime values then Sony Ericsson. However it is unknown how SonyEricsson and Nokia test their battery life and if these values are comparable at all.

My first guess to explain the difference would be that the W800i has a tiny efficient cpu, and the P990i comes with ARM9-based processor clocked at 208 MHz. And the N95 has a Dual CPU.  Type: ARM 11 at 332 MHz and a 3D Graphics HW Accelerator. More MHz usually means more power drain! 

However CNet Review tested the N73. The N73 is stated by Nokia to have 4.1 hours of talktime. Bonnie Cha of CNet states their test gives the N73 9.1 hours. More than double the value of Nokia. PC World states they are going to test the N95 talk time. I await the results with confidence and would guess the results to be quite satisfying and competitive to the P990i. It looks like it that the Nokia talktime and standby figures are VERY conservative values. The testing conditions of Nokia are probabely far more demanding than those from SonyEricsson and other producers.

Video Playback:

• Playback until battery dead, 3 hrs 14 min for the N95 versus 4 hrs 4 min. for the iPod 30GB, the N95 had bluetooth and 3G connection switched on during playback. In offline mode it does 3 hrs 35 minutes. All tests were on a PRE-production version. Source :James Burland at The Creative Live Blog

I would say video play power consumption is very acceptable.

Music Playback:

• 5 hours of contineous music from a full charge. No settings or firmware specified. Source: Sandra Vogel at Trusted Reviews. Did she use speakers?
  
• 8.5 hours  at maximum volume settings and random playback with default headphones and remote control used,  source: Eldar Murtazin at Mobile Review.
  
• 10 hours, 20 minutes. Playback until battery dead in offline mode, PRE-production version. Source :James Burland at The Creative Live Blog
• 3 hours of contineous music from a full charge using a bluetooth headset. Lukas Kahwe Smith at Poo-tee-weet.Odd, I would not expect bluetooth to be such a power drain.
  

The W800i: 30 hours of battery life in music mode (i.e. non-phone mode) or 15 hours of battery life if the phone is also being used to receive calls. This is incredible and at far outperforms the N95.  But then again, the W800i is a dedicated musicphone which happens to have a 2MPixel camera with a attachable flash. I think 8-10 hours iwith the  default headphones seems to be  reliable figures. James and Eldar also specified their used settings. As such then the 8-10 hours of the N95 compares well to an iPod (12 hours) or a iPod mini (8 hours) according to Ipod Battery FAQ.

GPS Time:

• 6 hours of battery life with the GPS was on. No further test specifications. Source: Rahul at Yahoo Research Berkeley.

Well my Garmin eTrexx is designed for lightweight and powerefficiency lasts about 12-18 hours with a fresh set of batteries. Using the Garmin for satnav in my car actually drains the batteries a lot faster. There is more display action and on the fly route calculation. In comparison 6 hours for the N95 then seems comparable and very usable. Few people take the N95 GPS for long walks in the outdoors, there I want a waterresistant and shockproof GPS with an altimeter and compas.

CONCLUSIONS:

Each function separately the battery performance seems quite as can be expected.  Up to par with current technology. It is clear the W800i has the circuitry of a real standalone highly efficient mp3 player inside itself. This is supported by the Walkman only mode, where the phone part is simply switched off. Few phones can actually compete with that sound quality and power efficiency lasting (in offline mode) 30 hours. But for the rest I would say the performance seems on par with other devices that deliver comparable functions on a comparable battery capacity.

The same seems to hold for the standby time and the talktime. The CNet test for the N73 seems to indicate a very different vorm of testing between SonyEricsson and Nokia. It seems that the N80i and the N95 are not very different in power usage compared to the competitors. To me the phone seems to not drain the battery when I do not give it a reason. That means, excellent standby and calltime, no significant impact when using it as an organizer during a work day. Powerefficient when I use it wisely.

I can have a connection to a SIP server over Wifi all day at work without actually draining the battery more than a  bar. I am next to the linkup ;-) However when using tv-out to play movies or driving with the GPS navigation for hours from cell area to cell area, with all lights and speakers blazing, I am somewhere where I can and should hook it up to a power out-let to use all those nice powerhungry extra features. However I would say in general the battery life is much better than most laptops ;-) Go Nokia, go!

I would say the figures speak for themselves and suggest you all are going too keep an eye out for the PC World Testlab results. And the best thing is perhaps yet to come. Doubling of the battery capacity!

Wolfgang Gruener at TG Daily wrote at may 8th, 2007:

Researchers of the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory claim to have developed an enhanced approach to building of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.According to a press release, the technology could be used in virtually all lithium-based rechargeable batteries – and improve the battery life for example in consumer electronics, laptops, medical devices and even hybrid electric vehicles.

It was unclear if and when the technology could go into mass production. But specifications seem to indicate a possible doubling of capacity.