8. Planon Universal Mobile Charger

by Barry Gerber

Is your dad or grad constantly fiddling with discharged phone, music player, GPS and other small device batteries? Well, Planon (to be read as "plan on") has come up with an interesting twist on the standard third-party battery charger, the lithium ion-based Universal Mobile Charger or UMC.

That's the guts of the UMC above. It's essentially a 5.5 volt, 4400 mAh rechargeable battery. Now take a look at the photo below. The adapters in the photo represent the real power of the UMC. Once the UMC battery is charged using the included AC charger (not shown), you can attach any of the included adapters to it and charge up or power any device that is compatible with the adapter and the UMC's 5.5 volt battery output - the UMC adjusts polarity automatically.

You connect an adapter to the long coiled device-charging cord in the middle of the photo and plug the cord into the output side of the UMC. A light on the UMC glows green when you do this. In the photo, I've attached the standard mini USB 5-pin adapter to the cord. With the device-charging cord plugged into the UMC and into the device you need to charge, the UMC light glows red to indicate that the device is being charged.

From left to right, the following adapters are included with the UMC: Mini USB 4- pin (for DocuPen, also made by Planon); unidentified phone, standard USB female for iPods (cable included with the iPod must be connected to this adapter); 2.00mm plug; Mini USB 5-pin (attached to UMC device-charging cord); 4mm plug.

The Mini USB 5-pin adapter is the most flexible adapter included with the Planon UMC. It covers a large range of phones, music and video players, cameras and GPS devices.

The Planon UMC powered and charged my Garmin Nuvi and Blackberry Pearl using the Mini USB 5-pin adapter just fine. It also powered and charged my Fujifilm FinePix F30 digital camera using the 4mm adapter.

The UMC's 4400 mAh battery is quite capacious. It charged all three of the devices on one charge. The battery in each device was at about half charge. Planon's UMC has two downsides. First, you need to keep it charged or you can't charge other devices. I'm pretty good at that with mine, though I've been caught without a charged battery a few times. Second, if there is no adapter for your particular device, you're out of luck. The good news is that the adapters provided cover a large number of devices.