Oh! Gizmo

By Evan Ackerman

Ultracapacitors, or supercapacitors, are the new batteries. They recharge very, very, very quickly, the charge lasts for a long time, and you can keep on cycling them for tens of thousands of charge cycles. Kinda puts conventional rechargeable batteries to shame. Except that conventional rechargeable batteries are cheap and everywhere, but let’s just ignore that for the moment and talk about the 5.11 Light For Life Tactical Series UC3.400 flashlight, which has an ultracapacitor built right in. A 90 second charge will power this flashlight at 90 lumens for a 90 minutes, which equals a wicked impressive 23.5 hours out of 24 of on-time. You can recharge it 50,000 times (that’s a charge a day until the year 2143) with virtually no battery degradation or memory effects, but the LEDs themselves are only good for about 5 years, or until 2014. How disappointing. I really could have used 135 solid years of illumination.

The UC3.400 costs $170 (on pre-order for delivery in 2009), which is not so bad if you spread it out over a century or so (you’ll actually save about 40% over similar flashlights). It’s one of the very few ultracapacitor devices we’ve seen, and they’re certainly not cheap. But I’d totally pay a premium to endow my cell phone (or my laptop, for that matter) with a battery that recharged in 90 seconds and had no memory effect, wouldn’t you?

[ 5.11 Tactical ] VIA [ FlashlightNews.org, the world's only flashlight industry news website ]

By Evan Ackerman

I don’t have a USB volcano, but if I did, I bet I’d want to use it all the time, everywhere. I can do that with this USB power bar, which has a rechargeable 2200 mAh lithium battery inside plus a 5 volt USB power port to charge all your USB stuff. It also has a power level indicator, and a flashlight thrown in for good measure. A variety of included adapters let you charge iPods and common cell phones, and you should be able to charge things at least once or twice from dead. Once you’ve run the power bar’s battery out, you can recharge it from a USB port on your computer, or from another power bar. It’s $32 from USB Geek, which isn’t that much to pay to have a volcano available anytime, anywhere. There’s no telling when it might come in handy…

[ USB Geek ] VIA [ Geekalerts ]

By Evan Ackerman

Although I’m in no way complaining about my MSI Wind’s 6 cell battery and the legitimate 5-6 hours of productive (or whatever) on-time it provides, it’s not always enough. I guess there’s a market for this all day (8+ hour) computing thing, because Lion Battery/Mugen Power is about six weeks away from releasing a 9-cell battery for the Wind. There’s nothing sexy about it (they just stuck 3 extra battery cells on there, from what I can tell) but it packs a whopping 7800 mAh, which should be good for 8+ hours with no trouble at all. Pricing is TBA, but it may actually retail for less than a replacement 6-cell (which costs like $140), since the 6-cell has to go through an MSI distributor while Lion Battery is selling the 9-cell straight to you.

Personally, I think the 6-cell is an excellent compromise between portability, longevity, and (of course) sexiness, but if you’re one of those suckers who feels the need to work an 8 hour day, the 9-cell battery might be yet another reason to get yourself a Wind.

[ Lion Battery ] VIA [ MSIWind.net Forums ]

By Evan Ackerman

Carbon nanotubes are pretty amazing things. They’re the strongest and stiffest material on Earth: a 1 millimeter diameter thread of them can support a weight of about 7 tons. The problem is that they’re expensive (and tricky) to produce, especially in any quantity that isn’t just broken bits of tubes. The journal Science is reporting that researchers at the NanoTech Institute of the University of Texas at Dallas have come up with a way of cheaply and quickly manufacturing large sheets (we’re talking meters) of long nanotube strands that are completely transparent and stronger than steel. The sheets are “spun” out of a self-assembled nanotube forest, and can be created with fairly simple machinery at a rate of up to 10 meters per minute. Furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be any reason why the sheets couldn’t be made as long or wide as you wanted. The last picture in the series above shows a nanotube sheet supporting droplets of water and juice that weigh about 50,000 times more than the sheet itself… Pretty cool. No information on cost, though. Read the paper here (PDF).

Laptop batteries that recharge to 90% in 10 minutes, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

By Andrew Liszewski

If you’re concerned about the iPhone’s overall size and the varied reports about its battery life, I don’t think the iPhoneck Backup Battery solution is going to entice you to make the upgrade. While it provides the iPhone with an external 1300-1400 mAh lithium-polymer battery that can recharge it in about an hour and a half, it also adds about 2 or 3 inches to the length of the phone when attached. Sure it’s designed to match the contours of the new iPhone 3G (though the first gen iPhone is pictured) but you probably don’t want to carry this thing in your pocket while you’re topping up the battery. The iPhoneck Backup Battery ’should’ be released on August 1 according to the iPhoneck website, and will sell for $42.99.

[ iPhoneck Backup Battery ] VIA [ DVICE ]

By Jonathan Kimak

So you want a portable charger for your phone or mp3 player but the solar powered iPod is years away from reality. Instead you could try the Dance Charge.

A company called GotWind worked with music company Orange to create the Dance Charge. Weighing 180 grams the charger wraps around your arm and uses the kinetic energy from your body’s movement to power the battery. You can then plug in your phone or other electronic device to the charger to power it up.

The Dance Charger isn’t available for sale yet, but a prototype is being used at the Glastonbury Festival and will hopefully survive the mosh pit.

When it does come out and you use this and can only charge your phone up to 1 bar of power after a day’s worth of movement, it’s probably a sign that you need to get out of the office more often.

VIA [ Crave.Cnet ]

By Evan Ackerman

Rechargeable batteries are the bee’s knees. The only downside to them is that you have to, like, charge them and that requires, like, an outlet. The Powerfilm solar battery charger is designed to charge 2 or 4 AA batteries in 4 or 8 hours. The entire thing weighs less than carrying 4 replacement batteries, and with judicious use, I bet you could keep your camera + GPS + MP3 player all humming along indefinitely while you hike the Himalayas. It’s functional, rugged, and compact, and somewhat unsurprisingly, seems to have been designed for the military. Considering that, the price probably won’t surprise you either… The Powerfilm solar battery charger will cost you about $130.

[ Select Solar ] VIA [ 7Gadgets ]

By Andrew Liszewski

A battery backup device is a must-have accessory for those who forget to recharge their toys every night. But if you’re the type who forgets to recharge stuff, how are you going to remember to bring the backup battery with you? Well the obvious answer is to have it strapped to your wrist all day. This recharging bracelet might not win any points for design or subtlety, but it makes up for it with convenience and the fact that it can also be used hands-free.

The bracelet recharges over USB and stores enough juice to keep a PSP running for about 4 hours, or a Nintendo DS for almost 7 1/2 hours. It comes with the USB cable needed for charging and a secondary cable with interchangeable tips allowing it to be used with portable gaming systems, cellphones and MP3 players. It runs about $48 from the Rare Mono Shop and if you like the idea but are embarrassed about wearing it, you can always tell people it’s a security bracelet you were issued after getting out of prison. Just don’t let them see you playing Pokemon on the DS with it as it could diminish the credibility of your story.

[ Battery Backup Bracelet ] VIA [ Siliconera ]

By Luke Anderson

I have a lot of devices that run on AA batteries. Namely my mouse and gaming controllers, but there are others around here that need them as well. This of course means that I have a few different chargers throughout my house to ensure I’ve always got a fresh pair somewhere. If you also need rechargeable batteries on the go, I might recommend tossing this Freeloader Battery ChargerPop into your bag.

It claims to be the smallest and lightest battery charger in the world, which is always nice for a laptop bag. It will charge either two AA or AAA batteries to 75% of a full charge in three to four hours via your PC’s USB port. For $25, it probably wouldn’t be a bad addition to your gadget bag, provided your gadgets actually use AA batteries.

[ Gizoo ] VIA [ GeekAlerts ]