One of the major complaints of the Palm Pre is that its battery life is less than stellar. A simple workaround is of course to keep it plugged in. Carrying a charger around, of course, stinks. However, do to the magic that is IEEE standardization, there is no need for proprietary Palm chargers, as microUSB is available everywhere. For cheap.
I bought several of these cables for between $1.80 to $2.50 with minimal USPS 1st Class shipping from a great discount cable/adapter dealer, Monoprice.com. One for work, one for my laptop bag, one for my desktop, and one for my car.
Don’t want to spend $20 for Palm’s branded car-charger solution? I’ll admit, its a slick design but not really necessary to simply supply some voltage to the USB port. How about a $2 non-functioning charger, instead? (I’m sure there are others that can be purchased that supply more power).
I tested it. It works hardly charges at all. Cheaply built piece of junk. I took it on a road trip and it couldn’t charge at a rate fast enough to keep up with the phone’s heavy power demand for GPS navigation. Perhaps a different, higher quality adapter would supply enough power. Who knows? It was worth a shot for $1.
That is the power of microUSB, choice. Thanks, Palm, for not being evil with proprietary connectors!
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