Does anyone have any experience with the Sidewinder Cell Phone Charger ? I just ran across it yesterday and was thinking it might be a good addition to a rucksack. Any thoughts?

Chris.

I got a SindWinder from my wife for Christmas last year and have been carrying it in my "man bag" since then, but had not tried it out yet.

The SideWinder is maybe about the size of two C-size batteries held side-to-side, with a slight inward curve in the back that acts as a bit of a finger grip during cranking. The blue case is translucent and inside I could see that the crank is connected to the little generator (it is the size of one C battery) and their appears to be a circuit board alonge one side, a capacitor to act as a charge buffer and hold enough charge to let the while LED light work for a while without winding.

This morning while talking with my wife on the cell phone my battery started beeping - the battery was almost empty. Hey! Here is a great chance to try out the SideWinder.

So, when I got to work I sat in the truck and assembled the SideWinder. Everything is packed nicely in a nylon case that zips up. The phone connectors and the ~24 inch cord are packed in a tiny self-sealing plastic bag. I clipped the simple instructions from the side of the box and inserted them into the nylon bag too.

So here I am trying to hook it up. It looks like the male connectors on either end of the 24" wire are identical - no markings of any kind to suggest otherwise. I try to plug the cell phone connector into one end of the wire, but it is a REAL tight fit. So, I try the other end of the wire and it slides right in - almost too loose.

I take the tight fitting end of the wire and attempt to plug it into the charger, but it won't go in. It seems like the connector on that end of the wire is just too big <img src="/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> .

So, I flip the wire ends around. I insert the smaller male connector into the charger and the larger male connector into the cell connector - but it is a real tight fit. The cell connector fit into my Motorola phone just like all my other chargers (AC & DC).

I started turning the crank on the charger, and to my delight the light on the cell phone comes on and the charging symbol starts blinking. I should mention that I noticed that the LED light does not come on while cranking when the wire is connected, but as soon as the wire is disconnected the LED light comes on. There must be a capacitor inside that is charged and provides power to the LED.

I also noticed that you could stop winding for a second or two and the cell phone wouldn't notice that the charging had stopped. I think the capacitor acts like a buffer and continues charging the phone for momentary interuptions in the winding.

The smaller male connector did work loose once or twice over the 10 minutes I was cranking, but it really wasn't a problem. I was cranking with my right hand and holding the charger with my left hand. After 5-6 minutes my left hand was getting real tired of holding the little charger. By 10 minutes it was almost cramping. I tried a bunch of different hand-holds, but never found any better than way I held it when I started.

So I figured 10 minutes of cranking was enough, though I wonder how long the gears will last. I can tell if they're plastic or metal - probably plastic. I disconnected the charger end of the wire, disconnected the phone from the connector, and then pulled the larger male connector out from the cell connector. Here is where I ran into a problem. The center pin that was inside the cell connector stayed inside the larger male wire connector and was pulled out of the cell connector. I was able to reconnect the two after fishing for the original pin hole, so I could theoretically continue to charge the phone if I wanted to, but I could not get the pin out of the larger male wire connector.

So now I have a 24" wire with two male connectors on either end and one of them has a 1" pin sticking out of it. I was bummed. It appears that the problem was that the hole inside the "larger" male wire connector was too small. That is what made connection so difficult, and now I have the pin wedged inside that hole.

I'll try to contact the SideWinder people and see if I can get a new wire and Motorola cell connector.

The good news is that I was able to call my wife and talked with her for at least five minutes and had charge left over. I tend to consider my cell phone to be the most important "survival" item in my suburban EDC, and the SideWinder could become real important when communicating with rescuers. Assuming I can get a new wire & cell connector, I will continue to carry it.

I called the folks who make the SideWinder ( http://www.sidewindercharger.com ) and they told me to ship them the damaged cable and Motorola connector and they would replace them at no charge.

I'll keep you informed.

KenK, I agree that a cell phone could be a very important survival item in an urban emergency. But, I also know that during many urban emergencies, cell service will probably not be available, or so jammed that you won’t be able to connect.

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="" />

I wanted to keep as much of my equipment as possible "AA" compliant. There are excellent products on the market that give you power backup for phones and PDAs. Charge2Go is very compact, well made, and works (uses 1 AA battery). I have one of those for my wife and daughter's phones. Since they don't make an adapter yet for my Treo 650, I purchased a battery backup from Gomadic. This one uses 4 AA cells. The celullar system may indeed go down, but I have my Treo packed full of MP3 music, survival informaton, books, etc. etc. The world may come to an end, but I'll be reading a good book on the way out <img src="/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

Has anyone hooked up a sidewinder to power a PDA yet?