Accessory Review: Ecosol Powerstick

The power of stick compels you!

We all know that the battery-life of the iPhone is… well, a bit rubbish. Sure, there are things you can do to boost the time you get between charge cycles and yes, you do get used to charging the thing every night. But what happens if you get stuck somewhere where you can’t charge your phone or if you’re travelling and simply don’t have access to a USB port? We’ve looked before at the Mophie Juicepack which is one solution – but that thing is $160 and boy is it uuuuu-gly! Well, now we’re going to take a look at the Ecosol Powerstick which charges not just your iPhone but almost any other device you may need to inject some juice into. Let’s take a look.

The Powerstick with all its connectors

The Powerstick is a Canadian product made by Ecosol, and it’s marketed as the ‘green’ solution to charging your device. The basic concept is that you stick this baby into a USB socket, it pulls enough juice to fill up its internal battery, then it stores that power until a time when you need to charge a device with it. It comes with nine (yes, nine) different connectors that allow it to charge almost every brand of mobile / smartphone available: Palm Treo, Nokia, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson, Apple iPhone / iPod and the catch-alls of Mini and Micro USB. It comes in minimalist, white packaging that I’m sure Apple would approve of, and is priced at $79.95.

The Powerstick

The Powerstick itself is similar in form factor to a USB flash drive, albeit a bit longer and a bit wider, and comes in black or white. On the side of the stick is an LCD screen with a charge indicator, and an on/off button. The USB connector itself is concealed underneath a lid that blends in nicely with the rest of the stick. At the base of the stick is 3.5mm headphone jack, but no this doesn’t play MP3s – this is where the various adapters connect to the stick.

Juicin' up

When I took my Powerstick out of its box it had a residual charge of about 30% but to give it a good test I decided to full charge it. To do this, you need only insert it into a spare USB socket and leave it to do its thing. There is no software to install of course, and the LCD screen on the stick lets you know the status of the charge. The manual states that the device charges to 90% within 90 minutes so that’s how long I left it — when I came back the screen was indicating full charge so I removed it and popped the lid back on, then went about draining my iPhone’s battery by putting location services on, shooting loads of video and taking loads of photos.

A warning?

Once the battery was so low that the phone refused to wake, I inserted the iPhone connector and plugged it into my iPhone. At first, the iPhone came up with a couple of warning messages (above), however despite its threat to not play nice with my new Powerstick, the battery icon did indicate a charge and it certainly did work. I have experienced this kind of behaviour before with third party accessories such as docks, so I was not too surprised and the main thing was that it worked. I contacted Powerstick for their comment on this issue and they did confirm that this message is normal but only comes up ‘very occasionally’. I actually found it to display most times I connected it but there was no impact on function so there is no cause for concern.

The Powerstick with iPhone connector

Once the Powerstick was connected and its LCD screen was indicating a charge, I left the iPhone alone in sleep mode and just kept checking the LCD regularly until I could see that the Powerstick was out of juice. This took about an hour, and when I woke the iPhone it was charged to 74% — not quite a full charge but certainly impressive and enough to keep me going for several more hours. I then completed charging the phone using the dock, and recharged the Powerstick and completed the whole exercise again.

This time, however, instead of keeping the iPhone in sleep mode I used it as it charged — a bit of camera use, a bit of Google Earth, checking emails etc – and this time the iPhone hit 48% before the Powerstick was drained. 48% may not sound like much but this was coming from practically empty and with normal use, so I feel this is still a pretty good result.

This wouldn’t be a very balanced review if I didn’t come up with any negatives, so let’s see: I’m pretty sure that at some point I am going to lose the lid that conceals the USB connector. You take the lid off and you’ve got to put it down somewhere, so the chances are high that at some point it will get lost (just ask my wife!). That being the case, it would be nice if it was  hinged instead. Also the size of the stick itself means that it may not be able to connect to some recessed USB sockets without a small extension cable. It probably should come with one of these in the box, and also a small travel pouch to house the stick and the various connectors wouldn’t go amiss.

Minor niggles aside, though, this is a neat little unit at a very good price-point. I love that I can use it for not just my iPhone but almost any other device I might need to charge on the go, and its charge indicator takes the guess-work out of something you really don’t want to be unsure about. This really is a must-have travel accessory for any iPhone owner. Priced at $79.95 the Powerstick is available online and at branches of Noel Leeming nationwide.

– Powerstick online store

– Powerstick at Noel Leeming