Emergency Backup Power for you Phone: Battarix SOS charge card
Imagine you really really need your phone to work, but its battery is all but gone.
Emergencies of any kind, backcountry situations, and just plain goofs in forgetting to charge the phone or forgetting the charge cable, etc. Stuff happens.
What if you could carry a superlight battery that could give you power for an hour or so? Stow one in your pack or purse or bicycle seat bag, etc.
Enter the Battarix SOS charge card, weighing in at only 27 grams, and having an 8 year shelf life and built-in cables. It comes in a diminutive sealed package that can go just about anywhere.
Dimensions: 86 x 54x 3.8mm
Weight: 27g
Nominal Capacity: 1600 mAh
Output: 5 VDC / 500mA
Expectations
The Battarix SOS charge card is designed to maintain working power, with a modest charging effect for a drained phone.
It is not designed to charge your phone very much, unlike much larger and heavier battery packs. But who wants to carry a bulky battery pack (and cables) and keep it charged? That can make sense for some situations, but I gave up on that years ago.
How much extra talk time or similar can you expect? That will depend on a great many factors, but a baseline is likely to be at least an hour. Which is more than ample for most situations.
In use
One evening on the road, my iPhone 7 Plus had its charge down to 8%. I opened the Battarix SOS charge card and plugged it in. The phone recognized it as a power input as expected. The included sticker lets you attach it to the back of the phone for seamless portability.
I put the phone in Airplane Mode and let it sit overnight at which point the phone showed a 20% charge. How much juice remained in the Battarix I don’t know, but 20% is a far cry better than 8%. And that’s the point—8% is right on the edge of shutoff with a little use, but 20% affords a lot more confidence in not running out right away.
Even when I travel, I have power in my van for phone charging. But what I do not have when hiking is any kind of backup battery. I have run into situations where the camera or such has been left on in my pocket, and the phone is hot and drained. The Battarix SOS charge card is a perfect solution that I can just stow in my daypack and forget about because I’ll never notice the ~1 ounce weight and the bulk is minimal.
