What was the first portable battery you had to charge your phone

#1

I was digging through my man drawers looking for all my Anker bits and bobs when I can across this little beauty.

I can’t remember where I got it from or how much it was but I think it was eBay and about £30.

I can remember getting my first iPhone. It was the iPhone 3GS and it was a week after the birth of my daughter in March 2009. I’d had the Google G1 Phone (my first smartphone) for a week and hated it and ever since getting my first iPhone I never looked back.

But, what do you need when you get a smart phone?? Extra power because you can’t leave these damn phones alone haha well I can’t any way.

So this was my very first back up power supply.

009494CA-32B8-454A-B926-C8EA35A2184A.jpeg3024×4032 1.82 MB

EC6375A8-87A2-4CE6-B03B-DD110D25563A.jpeg3024×4032 1.68 MB
077F7AD7-A5D6-4F88-AB39-F7F01BD2F5B7.jpeg3024×4032 1.56 MB

3 Likes
#2

You’re lucky you found it.

I think my very first was the type where you put 4 AA batteries inside rectangular box and you had a set of adapters for different phones, this is the pre-USB era when it was practically different socket for every make of phone, probably Nokia being the most popular through the mid 1990s-2000s.

I think my first USB era portable charger was EasyAcc 7000mAh, gave to a family member its got lost, I remember it about the size of current 10000mAh.

I might be able to dig out something, I am a hoarder…

1 Like
#3

I just pulled out 2 old Nokia phones and my kids were amazed by them. “What could you do with these dad?” Haha

I said not a lot kiddo. Can’t find a Nokia charger though so she’s gutted we can’t turn them on.

1 Like
#4

My first portable charger was actually an Anker PowerCore 5000, I recieved it from an event last year.

#5

My first portable powerbank was for the mini usb on an old Motorola phone. Then I had the ones you put batteries in and came with a multitude of universal adapters. When Anker released their first battery bank I got that, I forgot what it was called. And I have had a handful of other charger banks over the years. The only one I use now is anker and my wife uses the zero Lemmon one because it’s really thin

1 Like
#6

a powercore mini I got on amazon

#7

I had one of those too. I thought they were the bees knees at that time. My, how times have changed and then we found Anker :stuck_out_tongue:

#8

I was thinking the same thing when I found this @Nhi.

I used this daily and wouldn’t it be great if we could get a full charge of something this small now.

Still works too :ok_hand:

1 Like
#9

The PowerCore 10000 was my first and still is my most used portable battery. Before that I was just frugal with my smartphone use :laughing:

1 Like
#10

Just don’t go puting it in the washing machine like I did with my original Anker battery pack. it might have been old but it was still useful and held a charge.

1 Like
#11

You can probably find a charger at a random garage sale for 25 cents

1 Like
#12

Same. It was very expensive to charge my phone away from the plug, but thankfully they weren’t as power hungry back then!

#13

Mine was a New Trent IMP500 (500mAh). I was turned onto this brand (and external batteries in general) back when I was beta testing an iOS app called MouseWait. Testing was done entirely in Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure Park (Anaheim, CA) and involved entering the attraction’s wait times (crowd sourced) and general app testing as well as GPS locations. Having an annual pass for years meant I had the ability to go test on my days off. Many times, I’d be there from opening til closing. The IMP500 generally got me through an entire day along with the iPhone’s internal battery…note that the iPhone (iPhone 4 & iPhone 5 at that time) was in constant use. I’d pre-charge the phone to 100%, plug in the external battery and use that til it was dead (external was to keep the iPhone topped off at 100%), then I’d run the iPhone’s internal battery from ~100% til it died.

The IMP500 It was a great pocketable size…but is now quite dated.

Over the course of a year or two, I accumulated three of these and they are still being used today with an iPod touch (1st gen) to play music.

1 Like
#14

The first one I had was a Jockery stick–pretty much an older equivalent to the PowerCore+ Mini. It worked fine, but charged fairly slow and got HOT while being used. I passed that on once I purchased a PowerCore 10400.

1 Like
#15

Sounds like a fun beta test. Hope you went on all the rides and attractions too

#16

Yes, periodic rides and attractions while beta testing when I’d meet up with others who were also testing and that I knew from using the app (quite an extensive group).

This was in addition to going with my son at other times on a weekly basis and going on all rides and attractions. I did test however when I visited with my son, but nowhere near as extensively as when I went solo.

My current arsenal of Anker Power Banks would’ve done very well…too bad I never got to test these newer batteries in the field under constant heavy use & load.

1 Like
#17

wow, that thing is retro.

1 Like
#18

Nice piece of vintage tech haha. Love the 30-pin Apple connector.
My first external battery was the PowerCore 20100 mAh, received through one of my first PU review !

1 Like
#19

I’ve got one of them too. Great battery for taking away for the weekend

#20

I’m pretty sure one of my first proper ones was the Anker Astro3e 10000mAh, which I bought about 5 years ago and it still works even though sometimes can be temperamental when charging my iPad Air lol Ive just assumed it has taken a dislike to Apple :joy: