January 7, 2009

Mobile Battery Let’s You Go Unplugged For A Week
By Sean de Jesus
Published in the November 2009 print edition of PC World Philippines

IceL Twins 102
www.icelkorea.com

In case you find yourself planning for a prolonged stay somewhere where there’s no power, you don’t have to leave your portable devices behind. This portable charger from Icel Systems Korea is built with an 18 watt-hour capacity, designed to charge mobile devices such as mobile phones, music players, portable gaming systems and other mobile devices that can be charged using a 5V USB connection.

Measuring approximately 100 x 44 x 22mm, and weighing 136 grams, the Twins 102 is a pretty simple device, featuring a stylish, glossy body with chrome edges, and a single button for checking the internal battery’s charge level shown using five LED lights. One side houses a couple of USB ports—one mini-USB port labeled “in” and one standard USB host port labeled “out”—this is the business end, where you connect the supplied c able (a common mini -USB to standard-USB cable) to either charge other devices using the “out” port, or charge the battery pack itself by connecting the USB cable (via the “in” port) to an AC power adapter or to a computer.

It may look pretty simple, but the company installed a few little-known battery-based technologies to make the Twins 102 last longer. Using a technology known as “Compounded Interconnection”, the multiple batteries inside the pack are wired in such a way to make sure that all the batteries are evenly charged to eliminate the risk of any one battery degrading faster than the others. This connection also makes sure that the kit will still work even when one or more individual batteries fail.

Charging the Twins 102 to max capacity through a USB connection takes around 3-5 hours. It’s documentation says that it should charge faster if you use an AC power adapter, but the standard package only includes the USB cable, so this is what we used. This shouldn’t be much of ahassle, since you can use both the in and out ports at the same time (using two separate cables) to charge another device while charging the Twins 102’s batteries.

Probably this device’s best feature is its flexibility. After scrounging around the office for a number of different adaptors for connecting it to different products, I found that it works with more than 90% of the devices I tested with (including Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung mobiles, Windows Mobile PDAs, and a number of different iPods). Some devices, such as Samsung’s OMNIA and one particular Sony Ericsson mobile, looked for an operating system through the USB cable and didn’t charge.

Fully charging other devices take one to two hours, depending on the device, and I used it to charge an iPod Classic exclusively for a week, giving me around 5-6 full charges after depleting the iPod’s battery down to around 20% before charging. Regularly using the iPod for around 2-4 hours a day, I lasted a full week using only the Twins 102 to charge it.