Just got this item in a few weeks ago. We are planning a good long hike in the mountains beginning of August and I was looking for a way to keep my iPhone charged for the whole hike as I will be tracking it using one of the iPhone apps I have. Last fall I tried to GPS track our hike up Mt. Pierce and the phone died halfway through. First I was looking at some different solar charges on the market, but I was turned off after seeing that in order for the backup battery/charging battery to be fully charged it needed 15 hours of sunlight. Not really what I was looking for in a charger or backup to keep my iPhone going. Ended up looking for a long term solution that will help not only while hiking but flying for long periods of time or in places where I am unable to plug in to charge.
The HyperMac Mini comes in a wide variety of colors, I selected the green one, but there are Black, White, GunMetal, Purple, Blue, Green, Gold, Orange, Red, and Pink
I ended up coming across this the HyperMac Mini. It is a 7200mAh Lithium Ion external battery in a pretty compact case. As you can see from the photos its not much bigger than an external hard drive or my iPhone. Also since it has a USB out I can not only charge my iPhone but any phone or item that can charge by a mini USB cable which is supplied as well.
According to the company Sanho/www.HyperMac.com it comes with some impressive stats.
Standby Time: 1800hrs
Talk Time: Up to 72 hours on 2G; Up to 30 hours on 3G
Internet Use: Up to 30 hours on 3G; Up to 54 hours on Wi-Fi
Audio Playback: Up to 180 hours
Video Playback: Up to 60 hours
Weight 8.4 ounces
One side has all of the ports needed. It comes with a USB Out port marked 5V DC Out, DC In for the AC charger, and a mini-USB in for charging with a computer or USB cable Also there is a Ch. Lo LED which is different colors depending on the charge and when charging. Green when fully charged, and red when charging, when charging your iPhone or other USB powered items it is Blue and will change colors till it gets to red when needing to charge.
Granted these are based on Apples standard specs and extrapolated by taking the internal iPhone battery and getting the ration on the size of the 7200mAh battery in this unit.
After a few weeks of testing I am thoroughly impressed with it. When it came in I put it on the supplied AC charger and it was ready in a few hours. Plugged it into my phone on at 6:30pm and left it on until the phone said it was on its own battery supply 3 days later around 7:00pm. I pretty much was doing my normal usage, phone calls most of the day some web browsing on 3G and WiFi, as well as some gaming.
Here is the HyperMac Mini size compared to the iPhone 4. As you can see its a little bit larger, but still pretty compact.
Put it back on the AC charger and it charged fully in 10 hours or so.
Here is the HyperMac Mini size compared to the iPhone 4. As you can see its a little bit larger, but still pretty compact.
All in all I am very happy with the unit. I will be doing an update in a month or so after I do some more testing, considering it will go camping a few times and I will see what happens when the iPhone starts to search for signal as I am in very low signal to no signal areas, which is known to drain the battery. Also this test was with the iPhone 3G, now with the iPhone 4 and its other functions such as compass, gyroscope, etc I will see if there is a different drain on the HyperMac Mini. Also my plan is to see how long it takes to charge from 20% left and how many times it will do so.
Also soon to come a review on the iPhone 4 and a few cases if they come out soon!! Want to make sure I get a good few months with the phone before an extensive review.
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Geoffrey Bolte is a Freelance photographer based in Northeast Connecticut accepting all photography assignments world wide.
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