Several weeks ago I came across a story on WP Central about this accessory for the Nokia Lumia 920 and it really intrigued me. I am often out and about finding myself needing a few hundred mAh’s of juice for my Lumia 920 and when I saw the price of $37 and just $3 for overseas Air Mail I could not pass it up.
When you order the Power Jacket, which is labeled as a Power Bank on the device, it is estimated to take 7-10 days as it ships from Hong Kong. I ordered hoping it would arrive before I headed to the annual MVP Summit but alas it arrived a couple of days later. Still 12-14 days for overseas shipment that has to clear customs, etc. is pretty good – especially for only $3 in shipping costs.
It arrives in a non-descript padded manila envelope and inside you will find the power jacket in a solid plastic case. There is no charging cord included because it is compatible with the charger that comes with the Lumia 920 as it uses the same Micro-USB port.
I immediately charged up the jacket which has a power button and line of four blue LED’s on the back just above the hole for the camera and flash. The lights indicate the charge/discharge status of the jacket and the power button starts the flow of juice from the jackets 2200 mAh battery to your phone. You can also charge the jacket while your phone is in it or it will act as a pass through to charge the phone directly from the power cord.
It takes roughly 90 minutes or so to charge the power jackets battery when the cord is plugged into a standard outlet and it is of course much slower if charging via USB. When charging up the Lumia 920 with the power jacket it typically takes the same amount of time to recharge from a low battery.
However, the benefit of using the power jacket to recharge the Lumia 920 is that it is still completely useable. Now the Lumia 920 has never been called a lightweight and the power jacket adds heft to the device in both girth and weight for sure. In the past I have carried a power brick to recharge my phone and have always had to awkwardly carry the combination of phone, brick and cord together while the brick was recharging the phone. Most inconvenient to use the phone like this. However, with the power jacket it is just one solid piece of gear and much easier to manage and use while the phone is recharging.
When the power jacket is charging up or recharging your phone the area around the power button and LED lights can get warm but not to a point where it is uncomfortable to hold.
I have been using this device on and off around the house now for over a week and for a $40 device it is well made and does exactly what it was designed to do. For me that is value and functionality in a great package.
Now I did not include a bunch of pictures of the device in this post because there is plenty out there already and I really just wanted to give you my perspective on the devices usefulness. Just in case it was not clear – this is well worth the $40 if you have a Lumia 920.
To check out some pictures and video of it please visit one of the sites below.
- Power Jacket for Nokia Lumia 920 – 2200mAh (Brando Store to order it)
- Brando Power Jacket for the Nokia Lumia 920, double your power, double your pleasure (WP Central – includes a video demo)
- First Impressions of Brando Power Pack for Lumia 920 (My Nokia Blog – contains lots of pictures of the device with a Lumia 920 in it)