mudpuddle: Solar charging my blackberry

I have a solio rocsta hybrid solar charger that I use to charge my blackberry. Between it and my car charger (before it broke) I didn't need any other source to charge my phone. I did a tiny bit of research before I bought this specific charger, mainly just read a few review of people saying it charged their blackberrys just fine and thought I'd give it a try.

About my phone use, I rarely ever use my phone to talk, I mainly use it for texting, emailing, tweeting, facebooking, picture taking, etc. you know all the fun stuff. I need to charge my phone every other day or so depending if I end up chatting a lot or taking a lot of pictures.

With the solar charger I can get about 4 bars of a charge when the solar charger is full, I have a total of 5 bars. It takes longer to charge than the wall charger or usb hookup to a computer but it is portable and it can be used as a power source directly, if it is in the sun and charging, you don't have to wait for the charger to charge-up to get power to your phone.

I leave the charger on my front patio to charge up and it doesn't get a full days sun but about half of the sun it could if it was in an unobstructed place. During the summer it takes just under 2 days to fully charge. The charger is suppose to be water resistant so I leave it outside overnight most of the spirng, summer, and fall, So Cal weather and all. In the winter I don't get much of charge, 4 or 5 days for a full charge but I leave it outside inside a zip lock bag so it doesn't drown in the sometimes rain we do get.

There are chargers with fuller capacity and that charge faster but I wanted something portable and durable. I bought it instead of a spare battery for a trip I was taking and I would be in the sun all day every day and using my phone a lot. The charger has a clip on it and I just clipped it to my bag when I was out for the day. When my battery got low I could easily hook it to my phone and charge it up.

The solar charger comes with 6 different adapters, a charge in cable so you can charge it up if there is no sun and you are going out somewhere, and there is even a little LED light that is only little in size, that thing is bright!

The charger has 2 charging lights on it, a red one that turns on when it is being charged and a green one that blinks when it is charging. The green one also lets you know how charged the device is, I have lost the instruction sheet but there is a button on the underside you press and the green light will blink 1 to 5 times letting you know how charged it is, 5 being fully charged.