The Jalopy Journal

The iPhone changed my life. No longer am I tethered to a laptop or a wifi connection – I can roam the world taking comfort in the fact that in a pinch, I can manage all of my sites and more from a little device that fits perfectly in my pocket. Quite frankly, I couldn’t live without it.

That said, there are some down falls. Specifically, the battery life sucks. And that’s why the Griffin Tech PowerDuo Reserve came to life. Essentially, it’s a combo pack that includes a home/office charger, a car charger, and a reserve battery. Each is available individually, but I needed it all so I bought the value pack.

The wall charger and the car charger are what you would expect. Plug them in and charge your phone – I won’t bore you with the details.

The reserver battery, however, is interesting. It’s a small battery back (slightly smaller than a Zippo) that you charge via the ac or car charger. Once fully charged (it took mine just under two hours), you can then hook the little device to your iPhone to charge it on the go. Here’s what I did:

1. I drained the iPhone battery completely.

2. I then hooked the fully charged battery pack up to my drained iPhone.

3. After 45 minutes, the battery pack was now drained and my phone had a 55% battery charge.

To be honest, I was a little disappointed. I expected a full charge on the iPhone after the procedure. However, 1/2 a battery ain’t bad when you are desperate and on the road. Hell, I’d buy it again…

If you are a junky like me, you can pick up your PowerDuo reserve for about $40 from various sites on the net. Alternatively, you can get the reserve battery by itself for about $25.