Portable battery for cellphones

[tink20]

Are portable battery chargers necessary at WDW (at home my battery lasts all day), and any recommendations are welcome. (IPhone 6) Also, do you need one for each phone or can one charge 2 or more phones. TIA

 

[Barnabas T Bullion]

Depends how much you use your phone. I don't need to charge until we hit the room again. Last question depends on the type of battery you get and how many ports it has. I have one that can charge two at a time.

 

[Robo]

Are portable battery chargers necessary at WDW...

It's better to have and not need, than to need and...

 

[Angel Ariel]

We have a jackery charger. It is a little on the big side, not a lipstick type charger, but it will charge both of our phones simultaneously. It was definitely necessary for us to have it. My phone is "older" (almost 3 years, lol) and the battery just doesn't hold a charge all day any more, not even at home. The spotty WiFi and cell service in the parks didn't help that, so it needed to be charged at some point during the day.

 

[IrishNYC]

We have a Jackery Giant. It charges two items at once, about five charges total. It was recently on sale on Amazon for $30.

 

[Best Aunt]

I have a Mophie Juice Pack. It works great, but it's heavy. Are you planning to use your phone to take pictures? Are you going to keep using your phone to see how long the lines are? You may be using it much more than you do on an average day at home.

 

[Disney Dynamite]

I have an Anker Astro Mini that I've used with an iPhone 4S and now my 6. I can typically make it through the day on one charge, but since I use my phone as my camera, I like to have the portable charger just in case. (Also, the MDE app is such a battery drain.) It's small but will only charge one phone at a time.

 

[mlnbabies]

I know that I will need something for my I phone 5 when we go in Dec. What does everyone recommend?

 

[Dr.Mickey]

I'm using one called PowerAdd on a non-Disney trip right now. Great reviews on a tech site. It is about the size of my iPhone. I have an old 4s which struggled to make it through a Disney day back in Feb. It is on sale at Amazon for $20 and it is working fine. Seems like solid construction.

 

[UncleMike101]

We have an Anker Astro 3, and an Astro Mini.
We used them at WDW last year and never ran low on power even though my Wife uses her phone for tons of still pics and movies.

 

[jomass]

This is actually a good topic. I have an iPhone 6 and Sprint service. I’m wondering if a full charge will last a full day at the parks. I would likely be running a couple of apps like My Disney, and Lines, and taking some pics. Other than that though, I won’t be using it very much.

I don’t want to carry more than I have to, so can I get away with it? Or are any of the parks one of those cellular black holes that sucks the life out of phones?

 

[CAS239]

Their not a necessity but they can come in handy if you're on your phone a lot.

They can charge two at a time if you buy a bigger one that has 2 USB ports.

Each portable charger comes with a certain amount of MaH. It takes about 1800 mah to fully charge an iPhone from being dead one time. Most of the lipstick size ones people mention bringing to the park are about 2000 mah. So that's enough for 1 charge and a little extra. I bought one off Amazon for about $25 that's 10,000 mah. It's about the same size as my phone, but I get a lot of charges out of it before having to recharge it.

 

[stormer]

I bring one every time, but don't always need it. I use a New Trent portable charger that I got from Amazon. It works great for my iPhone and holds a charge for a long time. On an average day, I don't need it. Sometimes the kids go on rides and I wait for them. Those days I tend to use my phone while I wait to pass the time and then I need the charger.

 

[BarbieGal457]

I would take one to be safe. I bought cheapie stick-like external batteries on Groupon for I think $15 each, and you hook up your USB cord to it to link it to the phone and charge it. They worked, but the whole cord thing was a pain in the tushie. I also just saw the same type ones at Target on Monday for $5! Can't be that!

I personally love Mophie battery packs. I had one for my iPhone 5, but when I went for NYE this year they were not yet available for the 6. They are now so I am getting one for my May/June trip. While pricey ($100 USD), they are AMAZING! Since it is a phone case, no need for cords - just flip it on! It also plugs right into your wall outlet so the phone and case charge at once. It really does make life easier on vacations, at concerts, etc. On NYE we both kept our phones on airplane mode to conserve battery since we could still take photos, but we didn't need to make calls, keep in touch with other party members (only 2 of us), etc and that worked out well, but I agree - better to have it and not need it!

 

[sweetnjmom]

We have a jackery charger. It is a little on the big side, not a lipstick type charger, but it will charge both of our phones simultaneously. It was definitely necessary for us to have it. My phone is "older" (almost 3 years, lol) and the battery just doesn't hold a charge all day any more, not even at home. The spotty WiFi and cell service in the parks didn't help that, so it needed to be charged at some point during the day.

Good to know! I got a Jackery charger on Amazon (Gold Box Deal) last year and it's not super big but not lipstick sized either. I hope it works. I have an iPhone 5S, which runs out of battery life quicker than my husband's iPhone 6 Plus. We use the iPhones to entertain my son on lines that DON'T have interactive queues. Plus I like taking some pics on the iPhone instead of my DSLR to share with family via FB.

 

[hakepb]

This is actually a good topic. I have an iPhone 6 and Sprint service. I’m wondering if a full charge will last a full day at the parks. I would likely be running a couple of apps like My Disney, and Lines, and taking some pics. Other than that though, I won’t be using it very much.

I don’t want to carry more than I have to, so can I get away with it? Or are any of the parks one of those cellular black holes that sucks the life out of phones?

My old iPhone 4 on Sprint 3G sucked the life out of my phone at WDW (like 1% drain per downloaded txt)
My newer iPhone 5s with Sprint LTE did much, much better this Christmas week. (But we never did full days without a mid-day room break)
I'd still recommend some portable charger. I have a smaller 2500mha one) Like Robo said, it's much better to have it vs running out .

 

[jtowntoflorida]

I also have an Anker Astro Mini that I take to the park. I don't get on my phone much and don't use it as my camera, and I still find that my battery drains much more quickly than at home. MDE is a battery hog, so if you use to check wait times, FP+s, ADRs, you'll be surprised at how fast your battery drains. The other issue is that Disney's wifi is pretty spotty, and so it drops a lot and causes the phone to waste battery looking for a hotspot to connect to. I do tend to shut off wifi and rely on my data alone to try to preserve the battery, and use easywdw.com's wait times page instead of MDE. Easywdw.com uses the same Disney data feed as used in MDE, so it's the exact same data just displayed in a less battery-hogging way.

 

[Wood Nymph]

When we travel with other family members and need to stay in contact via text messaging then the battery tends to run out by 5pm. But when it is just the two of us who are always together then the cell phone battery usually lasts all day, especially since I often turn the phone off.

 

[Mrs. Max Goof]

I saw some at Five Below, but my bf was concerned that a cheapie one wouldn't work well. I am only using mine for the MDE app and possibly the Lines app.

 

[Skywise]

I have a Patriot Fuel+ that I've used for about 2 years now and it works great.

The iPhone6 has an 1810maH (milliamp hour) battery. This means that you'll want a battery pack that has at least 1810mah to get 1 full recharge of your cell phone (basically double the time). Most of your cheaper battery packs will be around 1440mah which was the standard cellphone battery before this current generation of phones).

If you get a battery pack of 4000maH you'd get a little more than 2 full charges out of your phone (triple the life), 9000maH would give you more than 4 charges.

Another thing to look for is the charging rates. The Fuel+ I have has 2 USB ports, a 1.0a port and a 2.5a port. The 2.5a port can deliver more energy (2.5 times more) than the 1.0a port so your phone will charge faster than the 1.0a port. (This is great if you don't want to leave the charger connected to your phone the whole time or if you want to give your buddy a quick charge while you're having lunch.)

One other issue to remember is the time it takes to recharge the battery pack itself - The bigger your battery the longer it takes to fully charge it (my 7800mah battery takes about 8 hours to fully charge from empty)

Now - How fast your phone drains at DisneyWorld depends on a lot of things - how many photos/videos you're taking, how often you check MDE or how often you're uploading your photos to facebook (Look, it's me and Gurgi!... Yeah, like THAT ever happens... ). The other issues you run into are the phone trying to maintain its connection with the cell network. With all of the crowds carrying cellphones they're all trying to get onto the same cell towers and this requires the phone to boost its transmitter to try to get a clear connection to the tower. This will cause your battery to drain faster than it normally would.

In my personal experience though a 6000maH battery size seems to be perfect for me. I have a 7800maH battery and I rarely discharge it more than halfway - and that includes helping friends charge up too.