Information about Power Bank Portable Chargers

A lot of people have problems with keeping their mobile devices charged.  Tablets aren't too bad, unless they're playing a lot of video or streaming data.  Mobile phones can drain really quickly, especially if they're being used in remote regions or inside buildings, where mobile coverage is cutting in and out frequently.

The simple solution is to always keep a wired charger handy so you can plug into the nearest wall outlet.  But what if there are no outlets around?  This can happen frequently, for example:

- Hiking, or camping in remote areas.

- At sports event.

- In some bars or restaurants.

- At some airports or train stations.

 

Those are just a few examples.  The simple solution is to buy a "power bank."  A power bank is essentially a portable battery, which you can use to re-charge your mobile device.

A power bank will generally charge devices that can be charged over things like USB cables, but can't charge items that plug into a household outlet.  So for example, you can usually charge tablets, phones, mp3 players, and some GPS units.  You can also charge a small number of cameras, such as GoPro cameras.  Some tablets, most cameras, and laptops require a wall plug, so a power bank isn't going to be helpful for these pieces of equipment.

On that topic, let's look at some specs.  Most items that are 5 volt can be charged by a power bank, not specifically because of the voltage, but just because devices with 5v usually have the proper charging connections that can be taken advantage of.  Some tablets and many cameras range from 8 volt to 12 volt, and can't necessarily be charged.  Laptop computers generally accept between 12 volts and 24 volts.  The charger on the laptop is actually a step-down transformer to convert 110/120v or 220/240v into the proper voltage for the laptop.

Power Banks are essentially batteries.  You charge them, then they hold this charge until you drain it by moving it into another device.  In fact, you can say that a power bank IS a battery, technically speaking.  In fact, the innards of a power bank sometimes are one big battery, or a bunch of smaller batteries connected to each other.  There is a small portable battery called an 18650 that is commonly used in Asia to provide the storage capacity inside a power bank.  A couple or several 18650's are wired together inside the power bank, depending on the size and capacity of the power bank.  By the way, this isn't necessarily a good thing, as we'll find out in a minute.

The guts of a power bank are usually lithium ion or lithium polymer storage.  Lithium ion is a liquid electrolyte.  Lithium polymer is a solid polymer electrolyte.  What's the difference?  Lithium polymer, or LiPolymer, is generally better.  It can have a flexible size and dimension.  It producers less heat, which means that it's more efficient and safer.  It has a lower self-discharge rate.  The storage capacity decays more slowly.  The only real drawback about using LiPolymer instead of Lithium Ion is that LiPolymer is more expensive.  That's the reason Lithium Ion batteries (18650's) are less desirable.  You may find that some no-name power banks are just a bunch of old 18650's that have been recycled, not necessarily even fresh new batteries!

The health of your phone battery decays over time.  That's why a new phone can generally hold a charge longer than when the phone starts to get older.  You could say that if a phone's battery health is at 80%, its charge can only last 80% as long as it would have when the battery was new.

As you're moving energy around from item to item, some of it is lost either as heat or due to inefficiencies in the conversion process.  This is important when figuring out how much a power bank can help you.  We'll get into that in a minute.

Here are some of the specs that you should look for in a good power bank:

- What is the number of mAH?  This stands for milliamp hours.  Ideally it should be at a voltage of five volts.

- Can the power bank charge and discharge simultaneously? It could be frustrating to have a power bank that will not charge another device while it is itself charging.  Some power banks will both charge internally and charge an attached device if the power bank is itself plugged in and charging.  Other power banks won't charge the attached device until the power bank itself is unplugged from the wall.  And finally, some power banks, if plugged in and attached to a device that they are charging, will let the power from the outlet pass through and charge that remote device first, before the power bank itself starts to charge up.

- How many output ports are there?  Can two devices be charged simultaneously?

- What is the output current rating?  A higher number is generally better.

                                                                              

Your biggest question when looking for a power bank is probably something along the lines of, "How many times will it charge my phone?"  Is there a simple way to figure this out?  Well, sort of.  But the formula isn't perfectly simple.

Some power banks have very low capacities, with rated capacities listed as probably under 4000 mAH.  These are no good.  They probably have one or two 18650's inside them, and might barely provide a single charge for a typical phone.

Some power banks have very high listed capacities, like 40,000 mAH and higher.  It seems that a lot of these are actually scams.  There are some that are legitimate, but a power bank would generally have to be fairly large to have that capacity, not the sort of thing that would be the size of a deck of cards, and convenient to carry around.

Other power banks have capacities of perhaps 8,000 to 15,000 mAH.  In my limited experience, these tend to be the best ones.  They're probably a branded model, and the numbers are more likely to be accurate.  You best bet, however, is to double-check by doing a google search for reviews on the exact brand and model of the power bank you're looking at.  Luckily, a lot of people who have bad experiences with a particular purchase will post the info on the internet, which can prevent other people from being ripped off.

Some power banks have internet circuit protection.  This is important.  If you have something without circuit protection and it gets connected to the wrong thing, it's pretty easy to hurt the internal batteries so they die or become extremely weak.

Let's say that you have a phone that has a 3,000 mAH battery.  Let's also say that you have a Power Bank that stores 12,000 mAH.  You've probably already come up with a very good question … can you just divide these numbers to come up with the amount of times that your phone can be charged by the power bank?  In other words, can your power bank charge your phone exactly four times?

This is good logic.  It's also moderately correct.  The only problem is that you have to factor in the phone's battery heat, and the conversion rate.

Let's say that your phone is getting older and it's only about 80% healthy.  The problem is that there's no exact scientific way to measure this for the average consumer, so it's a guess.  You can probably figure it out roughly from experience after charging your device several times.

Also, let's say that 15% of the stored energy is lost in conversion.  That means that only 85% of the stored energy in the power bank will make it to the battery of the device being charged.

After considering these two adjustments, the correct formula for figuring out roughly how much your power bank will charge would be:

Storage of Power Bank * Conversion Rate * Phone Battery Health / Phone Battery Capacity

Or in this example:   12,000 * 0.85 * 0.80 / 3,000 = about 2.72 times.  Nearly three full charges.

As I said, this is a rough equation, but by guessing the approximate phone battery health and conversion rate to temper your expectations, you're going to get a more accurate assessment than by using impossible "perfect case" results.

A lot of the cheap no-name power banks made in Asia are sketchy.  Many are cheap and use old recycled batteries.  A new 18650 is supposed to have a charge cycle of 300 charges before it's essentially useless.  However, if an unscrupulous vendor builds a bunch of power banks with old used 18650's, you might not get very many charges out of it before it dies.  Also, there have been occasional cases of someone buying what feels like a hefty power bank that must have quite a bit of storage capacity, and it's only got one or two 18650's and a bag of sand to tricky people.  Try to look for something that appears to have a brand name, at the very least!  And look for detailed specs.  The specs may be a lie, but if they're detailed and look legitimate, there's maybe a slightly better chance that you're getting a product that isn't a sham.

I did a short video to show you a power bank that I purchased.  I got lucky, this one turned out well.  I don’t think it's in production anymore because it's been replaced by a 13,000 mAH model, but the exact specs of mine are as follows:

- IntoCircuit Power Castle Series

- Model PC11200

- 11,200 mAH, 5 volt

- Can charge two devices simultaneously

- Has internal protection for under/over current/voltage

- Does not come with a charger, must use the charger for your phone or other device

- Only cost about $30 Canadian plus shipping from Amazon

Like I said, it's worked decently for me.  I did some tests on recharging my Nexus 5, which has a 2300 mAH battery.  Starting with the power bank at 100% and the phone at 0%, it took 108 minutes to charge using the 2.1amp line, which drained the power bank to 63% of its charge.  Using the 1.0amp line, it took 137 minutes to charge the phone, but it only drained the power pack to 83%.  I'm optimistic that by using the lower amperage line, I could probably get at least four and maybe almost five full charges out of the power bank, if it hasn't been sitting around for too long (your power bank, like any battery, will slowly lose its residual charge if it sits for an extremely extended time period).

Here's the video about my own power bank:

One last important consideration is that most airlines do NOT allow you to have power banks or other significant amounts of batteries in checked baggage, unless they are actually in a device!  So a battery inside a camera inside your luggage is fine, but a spare battery is not.  Therefore, remember that you will be forced to carry your power bank as a carry-on item!  Also, many airlines have regulations on the number and capacity of batteries that you can carry.  This probably won't be an issue, because it's a pretty generous allowance.  For example, several airlines won't let you have batteries over 160 aH (160,000 mAH).  But this is the size of a truck battery.  Many airlines also have rules like "maximum of ten lithium batteries per person in your carry-on, and any lithium batteries in checked baggage must either be installed in a device, in the original packaging, or in a carrying device that insulates the battery terminals."  Check the rules in advance for your particular airline if you're going to fly somewhere!

I'll wrap this up with a list of the battery capacities for a number of phones that are commonly available today.  I'm sure this list will be quite out-of-date within 24 months, but at least it'll give you a general idea of typical battery capacities:

1810 mAH – iPhone 6

2915 mAH – iPhone 6 plus

3220 mAH – Samsung Galaxy Note 4

2800 mAH – Samsung Galaxy S5

3100 mAH – Sony Eperia Z3

3900 mAH – Motorola Droid Turbo

3000 mAH – LG G3

2600 mAH – HTC One M8

2420 mAH – Nokia Lumia Icon

2400 mAH – Amazon Fire Phone

2300 mAH – Google Nexus 5

2100 mAH – Blackberry Q10

1800 mAH – HTC Windows Phone 8X

I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia.  Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production?  If so, visit:

djbolivia.ca/training

If you happen to enjoy techno tracks, most of my tracks are available as free downloads from this link:

djbolivia.ca/tracks

Thanks so much for visit, and for your support!  I really appreciate the fan base that I've been able to build up over the years.

Also, if you want to visit any of my other sites, here are a few links:

    YouTube:  youtube.com/djbolivia

    SoundCloud:  soundcloud.com/djbolivia

    Blogger:  djbolivia.blogspot.com

    Main Site:  www.djbolivia.ca

Learn How to Make a Ringtone

This afternoon, I decided that I'd teach you how to make a ringtone. We're the in middle of a large snowstorm here in Canada, and learning how to make ringtones is fairly easy for anyone who is moderately comfortable with computers and technology.

A ringtone is basically just a simple audio file, which plays on your phone when you get a phone call or text or instant message. So instead of a standard ringing noise, your phone might play the first thirty seconds of the theme from Seinfeld. I personally like to find songs that start relatively quietly for the first few seconds, in case you can answer your phone quickly, before they ramp up to full volume. Smartphones can also be set so there are different ringtones for different events, ie. one song for a voice call, another for a text message, and so on. Depending on the phone, you can sometimes even set your phone to play a unique song when a specific individual calls you, so you know who is calling without having to look at the call display.


If you'd rather watch a video to describe everything in this post, I have one ready. It goes through all the technical steps in enough detail that you should be able to figure out how to make your own ringtones and put them onto your phone. But I'll also describe the process in more detail below. Anyway, here's the video:





The first ringtones came out in the mid-1990's, and became really popular in the mid-2000's. Purchased ringtone sales peaked in 2007, but that's probably because people realized that you don't necessarily have to buy a ringtone to put on your phone. You can probably do-it-yourself. But of course, voice telephone traffic has also been dropping in the past couple years, thanks to the widespread use of texting, instant messaging, video chat, and other recent technologies. The rapidly increasing use of voice-over-internet is also cutting into traditional voice calling, because people can make free voice calls on their phones over wireless connections, through tools such as Facebook Messenger, Skype, Google Voice, and Bobsled (although not all of these platforms are available for every mobile platform). For example, I use my phone every day, but in the past six weeks I believe that I've only gotten phone calls from two people. Anyway, regardless of the slight decrease in importance of ring-tones in the past few years, it's still fun to have them.

There are several different ways to make a ringtone, including:
1. Using custom software designed to make them.
2. If you have an iPhone, it's easy to make them in iTunes.
3. You can use audio software to edit an audio file, then attach the phone to your laptop, and drag and drop the new clip into your ringtone folder on the phone, then turn it on in your cell phone preferences.

I'm going to show you each of the above processes, as quickly as I can.

If you're using either of the first two methods to make a ringtone, a lot of the technical stuff is taken care of for you. But if you're doing it yourself, you should be aware of a couple key points. First, the ringtone should be less than 40 seconds long. Some phones now allow longer files, so this rule isn't hard and fast. But you should also think about this: for most people, voicemail will kick in eventually, if you don't answer the phone. So with a long audio file, such as a full-length song, a lot of the file will never be played anyway because the phone will go to voicemail. For instance, my blackberry currently goes to voicemail after 5 rings, which takes about twenty seconds. So if I'm making a ring-tone, I'll always make sure it's only 25-30 seconds long, so I'm not wasting too much of my storage space. Of course, the way cell phones are advancing, storage space for a ringtone is essentially a non-issue now anyway.

There are a lot of different phones on the market today, and there are also a lot of different file formats that these phones expect for ringtones. Before you do anything else, you should do a Google search on your cellphone brand and model and find out what your specific phone requires. On a positive note, as smartphones get better, they're starting to take a much broader range of file types than a few years ago. Some example formats which are currently popular are 3GP (which is a video format), MIDI (a format used frequently quite a few years ago but much less popular now), MMF, AMR, M4R, QCP, and of course, a range of the "mainstream" audio file types such as WAVE, AIFF, MP3, AAC, and FLAC.

In the last example that I show in the video, I'm assuming that you've got a smartphone that accepts generic audio files, since that is becoming more and more common as technology advances. I've been able to use "normal" CD-quality audio files on some phones, ie. with specs where the sample frequency is 44,100 Hz and 16-bit sample size, in two channel stereo. But if you find that your phone requires a file with lower specs, it is easy when saving your edited ringtone to adjust the settings for a lower sample frequency, a lower sample size, or a conversion from stereo to mono (often not a bad idea, since your phone doesn't have stereo speakers).

I won't bother getting into a detailed explanation of our first option, using custom software to create ringtones. The software is pretty self-explanatory, and it has the advantage of knowing what format is necessary for tons of cell phone models out there. But you may wonder which software package is best to use. Rather than recommend a specific software suite right now, which could be irrelevant a year from now, I'm going to suggest that you do the following: first, do a google search on "toptenreviews.com" and "ringtone software." Top Ten Reviews is a pretty useful site which gives reviews on a ton of different product categories. If you find their current page, you'll see ten common software packages that can be used to make ringtones, along with a breakdown of specs for each package, pros and cons, and ranking details. For instance, right now, the top rated package is the MAGIX Ringtone Maker software for $19.95. All of the packages that you'll see on this site are for purchase, ranging from about $10 to $30 dollars, although you can also find free software if you look around carefully. Mind you, some of the free software comes with malware or limitations, so check it out very carefully before you install, and watch the install dialogues to see if the program is trying to sneak any toolbars or other crap onto your system.

The second option, which is specifically for iPhone users, is to use iTunes. Now you have to be careful because iTunes has a built-in ringtone maker, but that costs a couple dollars to turn a song purchased from the iTune store into a ringtone that you can use. However, if you've got any songs in your iTunes library that were NOT purchased from the iTunes store, ie. songs that you've ripped off a CD that you bought, or songs that you've purchased from an online retailer like Amazon, Rhapsody, or Songster, there is another approach. Basically, here are the steps in point form:

1. Pick your song and have it up on the screen in iTunes. Again, remember that it must be a song that you imported, not an iTunes purchase.
2. Right-click on the song.
3. Go to "get info."
4. Go into "options."
5. Select a start and stop time. Remember, about thirty seconds total is probably optimal, and as you can see, you don't necessarily have to use the first thirty seconds of the song. You can pick a section from the middle of the song.
6. Right-click and "Create AAC Version," NOT the "create ringtone option."
7. A copy will now be made in iTunes which is the section of the song that you specified between the start and stop times above.
8. Drag and drop that new piece of audio out onto your desktop, so you can play with it.
9. Delete the copy that is still in iTunes.
10. Go back into the info/options for the full song that you were working with in steps one and two, and change the start and stop times back to the beginning and end of the song, so the next time you play it in iTunes, you hear the whole song.
11. Go out onto the audio file on the desktop and change the extension from M4A to M4R. You'll have to confirm that you want to change the file type. Incidentally, if you're working on a PC and you can't see the extension, you can fix that in Windows 8 by going into Windows Explorer (window key + "E") and then click on the desktop in the left side preview plane, then click on the "view" tab and then near the top right of all the options put a check mark into the box that says "file name extensions." In windows 7/Vista/XP, click on this link for instructions.
12. Add the file back to iTunes, and make sure your iPhone is attached and visible in iTunes.
13. Click on the icon for your iPhone, then go into Sync and go into ringtones, and sync your device with the appropriate ringtone selected (same as syncing audio files, just a different tab).
14. Go into your ringtones on your phone and tell the iPhone to use the ringtone you just added for whatever its intended purpose is.

For the final option, I did a video demonstration of how to create a ringtone manually, using free software from Audacity. Since I didn't have an audio file on the laptop to work with, I grabbed a song from YouTube. Of course, for the purposes of the video, I used one of my own songs that I hold the copyright to. Here are the basic steps that I demonstrated in the video:

[Skip directly to step 5 if you've already got an MP3 or other type of song ready on your computer].
1. I downloaded a program called "YouTube Grabber" from download.cnet.com.
2. I used the YouTube Grabber to rip this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3V9xJcC7ko
3. Incidentally, I used that video not because it was the best possible song for a ringtone, but because I own the copyright. And I am hereby giving everyone reading this my complete written permission to rip and use and share that song for your own non-commercial purposes, if you want. And if you know any famous people who do placements of music in TV and film, do me a favor and play the song, and suggest that they contact me for licensing it for their commercial use. It would probably work better in certain film/TV situations than as a ringtone.
4. If you don't already have VLC Media Player on your computer, it's a free program. Download it and install it. Use it to extract an audio-only file from the video file that you just created with YouTube Grabber. If you want more info about how exactly to do that, go to the 40min 41sec mark of this video. FLAC is fine for the file type right now.
5. Open this new audio-only file in Audacity.
6. Trim the edges to the proper length. In other words, if you're not starting at the beginning of the song, cut out the parts at the beginning that you don't need. And once you've done that, cut everything after about the thirty second mark.
7. Optionally, you can apply an EQ to trim a bit of the low-end and high-end, because the phone doesn't have a great set of speakers anyway.
8. Go to effects and "Normalize" the audio to bring it up to full volume, in case it isn't already.
9. Convert the audio to Mono, if your phone doesn't accept stereo audio files for ringtones.
10. Save the new ringtone that you've just create.
11. Plug in your phone, drag and drop your ringtone into the appropriate folder on the phone, then go into the ringtones menu on your phone and set your new ringtone to be used in whichever alerts you want it.

Fairly simple, although for this set of steps, it probably would be easier to follow along with the video.

Ok, that's about all there is to it. There's not much point spend a couple dollars to buy a custom ringtone, if you own music of your own and you can create a ringtone yourself!

Here's a free download link for the "When I Grow Old" ringtone (right-click to download):
http://www.djbolivia.ca/tutorials/whenigrowold_ringtone.wav

Here's a free download link for the "Global Underground" ringtone (right-click to download):
http://www.djbolivia.ca/tutorials/globalunderground_ringtone.wav

And here's a download link for my desktop wallpaper, if you like the photo. I took it in Mackenzie, British Columbia, Canada:
http://www.djbolivia.ca/tutorials/desktop_background.jpg



If you enjoyed this tutorial, and are interested in any aspects of Audio Recording and Editing, DJ'ing, or Music production, check out the Videos page on my DJ website at the following link, and share a link to anything that you enjoy there:

www.djbolivia.ca/videos.html

I'm Jonathan Clark, known online as DJ Bolivia.  Do you want to learn more about DJ'ing and music production?  If so, visit:

djbolivia.ca/training

If you happen to enjoy techno tracks, most of my tracks are available as free downloads from this link:

djbolivia.ca/tracks

Thanks so much for visit, and for your support!  I really appreciate the fan base that I've been able to build up over the years.

Also, if you want to visit any of my other sites, here are a few links:

    YouTube:  youtube.com/djbolivia

    SoundCloud:  soundcloud.com/djbolivia

    Blogger:  djbolivia.blogspot.com

    Main Site:  www.djbolivia.ca