www.http://blog.novothink.com
Checking out this solar charger for the iPhone and thinking about purchasing one before our trip. Any advice or information appreciated. Thanks.

Where are the helpful techies?

Where is your trip?
How many hours of sun will you have per day?
Will you be in places where the sun can reach your charger (e.g., upper floor south facing window)?
A reguar charger is pretty easy to use as it only needs a plug adapter. Why complicate your life?

Thank you Ackislander. Trip to Austria and Germany, where days much like our time in USA. My iPhone usually needs to be charged every night. Using it a lot on the trip, I thought extra power might be helpful. I don't know if it has to be directly in the sun to charge. That is certainly important to know. I think it has to be light, but not direct sun.

Doesn't it make more sense just to charge the iPhone at night with it's own charger? It seems daft to buy something like the solar charger unless you are camping or visiting a country with irregular power supply.
Since you won't be using the iPhone so intensively on holiday the battery should last longer anyway.
Make sure you turn the internet connection off and all your e-mail, rss feeds and the like while away unless you want a horrible shock when you get your next bill. Data roaming is seriously expensive!

"I don't know if it has to be directly in the sun to charge. That is certainly important to know. I think it has to be light, but not direct sun."

Hi,violetduck,actually,Solar chargers can still work on cloudy days, but it just takes them much longer to charge up. They're definitely most useful to have if you live in an area where it's sunny a lot of the time.
Many consumer products are designed so that the battery is too small to store the power you would get in full desert sun all day, but most of them will store half of that much energy. So, areas that have a low solar input may need a couple days to charge to maximum.
And here is a little bit more information that might help you.
http://www.espow.com/wholesale-batte...-chargers.html

Both Austria and Germany actually have electricity, now. You just plug your charger into the wall like you do at home. The sockets are a bit different than ours, and you need a cheap adapter to make them fit, but current flows out of them quite reliably.

I don't know what country you live in, but do you take a solar panel with you when you travel to another city? Just one more gadget to lug around and complicate your life, IMHO.

As soon as I saw the BS about "works for iphone" I knew I'd been wasting my time reading the article

The best I've seen is the Freeloader Pro which will charge most things with batteries

http://www.solartechnology.co.uk/sho...loader-pro.htm

Well, not too many solar fans here I see. Thanks to all for
sharing your thoughts and other information that I will check out.