Mobile POWER -The Nokia DC-16 Portable Charger

So a little post about a little blue stick ? As a mobile geek, and a somewhat enthusiastic mobile phone user, I have for years been a fan of portable power sources, and a quick search on the www will find a plethora of choice, however mine has been, for the last five years or so the PowerMonkey 'Classic' a cute , pocketable little power source, which has travelled the world with me and also helped many work colleagues when they've run short of juice and forgot there phone charger at work, it's a super bit of kit and comes with a variety of different tips to fit almost any mobile device. However, as with any battery, over time they suffer and at some point they start to store less and less juice, it's due to physics or something, but all I know, is the old girl ain't as good as she used to be !!

So what to do ? Well as a Nokia fanboy and knowing the build quality of Nokia products, I thought I'd give the DC-16 usb charger a go, announced at WMC in Barcelona this year (Feb 2012) in funky colours, which are apparently Cyan (Blue) Fuchsia (Pink) White (which is actually White) and Black (which is what I actually wanted) but was not available at the supplier I chose, but as it was the cheapest I could find, I was happy to get the Blue one :) The other reason I chose the DC-16 was a favourable review from my virtual & real friend Stephen Oiller (@Psychomania666 on Twitter).

The DC-16 seems to work a little differently to my previous charger, in that it will only through charge, ie charge a phone whist it is connected to the mains and connected to the handset at the same time once the unit itself is fully charged. The PowerMonkey will do this staight away, but it's a mute point, as if you have mains power readily available, the need for a portable charger is somewhat removed ! Also, the Powermonkey comes with a variety of tips and the DC-16 just a simple short matching USB cable, however , as I say , it's 5 years old and things have moved on, and all but the most basic or stupid of phones now require bespoke connectors and so the DC-16 and it's 2200mAh of juice will work with almost all modern phones, certainly I don't know of a handset that I'd consider , that couldn't be easily revived and refueled by this little Blue stick.

The unit is very pocketable, and having it fully charged I think it would give me about one and a half charges on any of the phones I own.

The design and function of the charger is very 'Nokia' nice to look at, well built and functional. It comes in a very basic package with only a couple of instruction leaflets and a short colour coded short usb to mini usb lead, it charges with any usb wall charger or lead via a pc, has a standard port at one end and a micro port at the other with led lights to tell how far it's charged and a small button to check capacity, the internal battery is sealed in.

I purchased the charger from http://www.technextday.co.uk/ as they had the best price of £18.72 and although I'd never used them before, all I can say is they were very efficient and polite on the phone (don't ask, paypal issue) and kept me informed of my order via email at every stage, so all I can do is to recommend them !!

Anyone wanting technical specs on the unit can visit here http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/accessories/power-and-data/chargers/nokia-universal-portable-usb-charger-dc-16/specifications or take a close look at the photos I've added, as I am sure just about everything is covered. Anyway this was going to be a short post and I'm droning on, so I'll just add that the unit took a couple of hours or so to charge and that it makes the charge meter move on my E7, N9 & Lumia 800, and that's about all I need it to do.

Thanks for reading

Stephen Quin