CHRISTOPHJPETERChristoph Peter

Update 28.6.2009: I just got my iPhone 3GS and Iplugged it in and nothing happend. It appears that apple changed something on the power management so the iPhone 3GS can not be charged with it. Crap!

Today I received my external USB Power pack from Amzon. I got it because my phones battery is crap and the iPod Touch does not get through a day of wifi and gaming either. I am currently charging it for the first time so I can not report on the devices performance, but I read in reviews that it is capable of completely recharging an iPhone up to 2 times. The charging it self takes a qutie while. I have it hooked up to my computer for about 4 hours now and it is still not done, but I guess that this kind of charging will increase the overall lifetime of the battery inside. I find this kind of powerpack more convenient that the ones specifically made for the iphone and Ipod Touch since I can charge every gadget that takes power via usb and most other cellphones as well.

Pros:

• small form factor
• looks quite nice – I generally like the appearance of philips products
• low price 24€ at amazon, the kensington one costs about 40€
  
• comes with a ton of adapters ( Nokia,Samsung, Motorola, Nintendo DS, Sony Ericsson,Blackberry and mini USB)
• has 2 ports, one for charging the device and one standard USB jack to plug in your gadgets
• is advertised with 30 hours of battery life( I will test that and post)
• Retractable cable, no additional cable clutter !!!!
• for simple LEDs indicate the level of charge
• comes with a small black cloth bag to keep verything together

Cons:

• charging takes quite some time
• nothing else really

Update 3.6.2009 – Battery performance

the battery works really well. I was able to charge my ipod touch 2 times with one charge. I could charge my girlfriends ipod nano without even noticing a decline in charge.  so keeping in mind that charging the battery takes a couple of hours its an incredibly usefull device.

Philips SCE4420

update 28.6.2009 :this does not work anymore with the 3.0 firmware and an iPhone. It still works on my iPod touch though.

I subscribe to many video podcasts and most of the time I watch them, but sometimes I want to do something else like playing a game while just listening to the audio of a news video podcast. The problem is that video playback stops when you close the videoplayer, whereas audio continues to play in the backgroud if you run another app. After the latest software upgrade even if you selected a video podcast from the audio library it would launch into the videoplayer, which is a good thing most of the time.

To just get the audio of a video, start playing the video –> close the player(the video stops) –> double click the home button so the small media controll buttons come up and hit play –> the audio of the video is still in the audio que and will start playing for your enjoyment

I recently discovered that the apple remote app is capable of waking up a computer from sleep if it has wake on lan enabled, and it can only be woken up from sleep mode, not if the machine is entirely turned off. So if you keep your media server on all the time this is a handy way to wake it up without paying for one of the numerous wake on lan apps in the app store.