Solio Mono Hybrid Charger Review

On 10/1/2009 I purchased a Solio Mono Hybrid Charger from a Sprint Store. Good packaging, comes with a good selection of tips. Interestingly enough, the device is not listed on Solio.com (unless they consider this the same as the Solio H1000) The specs on the back of the manual are as follows:

DC OUTPUT: 5V-6V , 350mA - 800mA, Max: 4 Watts
DC INPUT: 5-5.5V , 100-400mA
Battery: Lithium Ion 3.7V 1,650mAh

1 LED BLINK = 1%+ battery
2 LED BLINK = 20% + batt
3 LED BLINK = 40% + batt
4 LED BLINK = 60% +batt
5 LED BLINK = 80% + batt

The Palm Pre I am using has a 1150mAh battery. I own a Sprint Portable Power pack which is not solar rechargeable, rather it uses a 2200mAh internal battery that must be precharged through DC input. The device works great and gives me almost two full complete charges. I have used this portable power device multiple times on trail with a Blackberry Curve 8330.

With the Curve, I can go on a week long backpack trip and have enough recharges to last me 6 days. (Given I am not roaming or using GPS tracking alot, my Blackberry battery will stay charged for 48 hours solid). The Palm Pre, even though it has the same size battery as the Blackberry (1150mAh), will last me about 36 hours with general use (2-3 phone calls per day at 3-5 min each / no GPS activity / Push email active). So this will be interesting to see how the Solio compares to the Sprint Portable 2200mAh battery pack. Can I take the Solio on a week long backpack trip and expect it to keep my devices alive? We will find out...

Front of Packaging


Back


All the goodies


Red Charging light (shows while charging on DC and Solar)


Same button turns green when done charging. It also, while charging, can blink green to indicate how much charge has been acquired.


10/2/09 - This is the first day I had the device; I fully charge it. I wanted to do an initial test with the device at full charge. So I waited till I got home tonight from work and plugged my Pre (which was at about 30% battery remaining) into the device (100% battery) and hit the button on the back. This initiated the charging process on the phone. I left it and went to bed (I started the charge at about 9pm). This was the first time this device has ever charged another device. I woke up (10/3/09) and found my battery life on my phone was at 34%. Something seemed amiss. Only 4% increase with the Solio starting with a full battery (indicated by 5 green blinks the night before)? I suspected that the nightly backup of the device caused it to drop back to 34%. (The one thing that sucks about a Pre is that if you don't put it on the charger everynight, when it does the backup, you will wake up with an almost dead battery. The only way to keep this from happening is to turn on airplane mode.) So I dropped my Pre onto its touchstone and then put my Solio back on the DC charger for an hour and 45 min before heading into work. By the time I left, I had three blinks of power. Below picks up the rest of the timeline with pics.

10/3/09 - Got to work. Solio had 3 blinks of power. Solio outside (sun was behind clouds during pic). I was testing to see if the red light would come on when I put it in sunlight. It did come on and indicated charging. I only left it outside long enough for it to register the charging LED. More to come on outside charging.


10/3/2009 2:47 pm- SECOND TEST FOR CHARGING ABILITY- Solio Charger still shows 3 blinks of battery power (I haven't charged it since I left for work) and Palm Pre handset is at 48% before I hit the charge button on the Solio.


10/3/2009 3:17 pm - Solio charger charged for 30 minutes exactly before turning off the charge (it discharged it's three blinks of power). It increased Palm Pre battery to 63%. Solio Charger shows 1 blink of power after this 30 min charging session. This is more of what I was expecting.



10/3/09 3:30 -11:00 pm - Charged Solio with the wall charger for almost 7.5 hours before it gave a green light. Before this charge it was at 1 blink worth of power (See the second test above/ The Solio will not fully discharge to where it will not at least show one blink of power. I suspect it is much like a Palm Pre battery and helps to protect the cell) . Once on the wall charger, it took 7.5 hours for it to get to 5 blinks of power. Within ten minutes of five blinks of power it turned solid green to indicate 100% full charge.

10/3/09 - Turned on the GPS, while streaming a movie, and turned the brightness all the way up to kill the battery of the Pre.


10/3/09 11:30 - Here it is right when it hit 0% battery. It shut off ten seconds after this. I then plugged up the Solio (which had a full charge from wall charger).


10/3/09 11:58 pm - It took roughly 25 minutes for the Palm Pre to get enough charge (it needs 10%) to come back up to its main screen. I turned the phone to Airplane mode (on the Pre it shuts off radio and wifi) and I turned screen brightness all the way down and made sure the screen stayed dark through the whole charge.


10/4/09 1:44 The Solio green charging indicator quit blinking which indicates it has discharged all of its internal battery. I turned the screen back on and the Solio's battery had charged the device to 69%. It took a total of 2 hours and 14 minutes to discharge its battery and to charge the Pre to 70%.


10/5/2009 10:00 am -I wanted to test the SOLIO's ability to charge itself. Today was an amazingly clear day and not a cloud in the sky. The high for today was 78 deg. Pic to show Solio positioned towards sun. Later I repositioned using a pen so the electrical box would not create shadow as the sun rose. The Solio has not been charged since I did the full recharge of my Pre the night before. So technically the Solio was at "empty" when the solar test was started.




10/5/2009 12:00 pm - Checked the device. Constant sun. Not a cloud in the sky. Only one blink still of power.


10/5/2009 3:00pm - Solio is registering 2 green blinks of power. I had to leave at 5 and still two blinks. I believe the manufacturer is right when they say it can take 20 hours of full sunlight.


10/21/2009 - I put the Solio outside for a few hours and due to overcast it has not registered a power indication. It has been either rainy or overcast for the past two weeks (ergo the delay in posting). I have decided to go ahead and post this with no long term test results, however, I will be conducting more test in the near future. As for right now, the test I have completed have made me truly doubt the viability of such a device in an outdoors situation. I am not foreseeing this device to be effective as a stand alone solar charger for backpacking situations. I do beleive it will do an OK job as a backup battery source, but there are a lot cheaper and better performing devices than this if used simply as a backup battery. I will be keeping this device, however, for those days where I may be at the beach and I have perfect sunshine and need to keep my iPod or cell phone charged through the day (it will charge a device while in perfect sunlight). However, it will not go in my pack as a reliable source of energy on the trail.

Here are some positives and negatives:

+Seems ok as a backup battery for one charge
+Cool novelty
+Has potential of getting solar charge if in perfect sunlight for a REALLY long time (ex:beach)
+Plastic housing seems durable
+Lightweight enough

-Solar recharging requires too much time for practical everyday use.
-Will not charge through any window that has UV tint (I left this part out of my initial post due to the fact I thought I was doing something wrong. I will not register a charge under my front windsheild no matter how good the sunlight is.)
-The rubberized coating is not durable. If it gets a nick it will peel. I dont care about aesthetics but wanted to mention it.
-The tips look a little flimsy to me. No breakage yet but am worried.
-There are better battery backups that will give more charges. (This part seems to be a general problem in many backup power devices. Why aren't there more 3000-4000 mAh portable power supplies? It may be because of FCC rules on portable power...I don't know.)
-Wished they had a direct USB hub, in case of lost cable, or better yet just circumvent the whole need for extra cables.