Nice personal story, KenK. But bummer about the pin getting stuck. I've always been attracted in wind-up cell phone chargers since they don't have any batteries to worry about and can potentially give you limitless power. However, the hassle and pain of actually cranking these small chargers long enough to get a decent amount of charge always made them seem somewhat impractical to me. Too bad. I guess they're good for generating enough power for a call, but to recharge the battery? Probably not so practical.
An alternative to the SideWinder is the Freeplay
FreeCharge mobile phone charger. I've never used it, but I have two Freeplay wind-up radios and have been happy with their quality.
Personally, for cell phone power backup, I keep a Porta-Cel by Uperex handly. I think I bought it at Best Buy maybe 4 years ago. It runs on 3AAA and even has a little built-in light (non LED, unfortunately). I've never tried leaving it connected and seeing how much of a charge I get, but I have used it to continue conversations when my battery was just about to die, so it works. If I do need to recharge my phone, at least I can just leave it connected and the battery will do all the work of recharging the phone, instead of my poor arm. <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />