Summary
Anyone who travels a lot must surely have cribbed about their phone's inadequate battery life. However, a solution is now available, with the Nokia DC-16 universal charger allowing you to quickly charge the phone on the move, till you can find a wall charger again! The charge speed offered by the DC-16 is the same as a conventional wall charger, and that is brilliant. At this price, we recommend that everyone should be packing this in his or her backpack.
Smartphones are big on power these days, but unfortunately, battery technology has refused to keep up. For people who use the phone heavily during the day, or are on the move most of the time, this has been a real issue. However, there seems to be a relatively inexpensive solution at hand.
Build & Design
The design of the DC-16 is essentially that of a stick. It is as wide and thick as two fingers from your hand joined side by side. It is small enough to be carried around in a pocket.
On one side is the micro USB port that allows you to connect the DC-16 to a wall charger to top up the internal battery. This side also has four LED indicators showing up the charging status and the current amount of charge when charging a connected phone. You need to press the tiny button with a depressed placement to light up the indicators. The other side has a full-fledged USB port that lets you connect any micro USB or mini USB cable, depending on what your phone needs.
The materials used are plastic throughout, but fairly good quality. The entire battery pack has been put together very well. For those who might want one, there are multiple colour options available as well – black, white, cyan and fuchsia.
Features & Specifications
The most important thing first - the battery capacity! This charger packs in a 2200mAh battery pack to top up your phone on the move. With most phones these days coming with under 2000mAh battery capacity, this one will be able to fully charge a completely discharged phone at least once.
Since this a Nokia accessory, you would half expect this to only work with Nokia phones. However, this claims to be a universally compatible accessory, and we tested this on multiple phones, including Blackberry and Android devices. And it charged up the devices without fail. The wide compatibility is a huge positive.
The DC-16 comes with a self-charging cable as well as a data cable for charging phones.
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Performance
The 2200mAh battery pack in the DC-16 is more than capable of fully charging my Blackberry from complete discharge to full charge in just more than 2 hours and 30 minutes. This is the same time taken by a full-fledged wall charger. Full marks to the Nokia DC-16 for offering rapid charge as claimed, something that most other chargers are unable to do, despite tall claims.
Self-charging is somehow slower than we expected. Completely discharge the DC-16 and it will take around 5 hours for it to fully charge via a traditional wall charger. Not that this is a huge drawback, but this is surely a time consuming process you need to factor into the schedule if you plan to grab the DC-16 on the way out to the airport!
Bottom Line
For anyone who finds their phone’s battery life inadequate, the Nokia DC-16 will help keep it topped up on the move, at least till you get home. The 2200mAh battery pack will offer at least one complete charge of the phone’s battery. At this price, we recommend everyone should buy one and keep in the backpack. You never know when you might need it.
