BlackBerry Car Charger Buzz

A friend of mine called me up recently and told me that he had decided that he definitely needed to get a BlackBerry Curve car charger.  Like me, he had gotten stranded one time too many with a BlackBerry that had gotten a dead battery, and he was determined to make sure that it never happened again.

First he asked me if I was happy with mine.  I told him what a difference it’s made for me, and how I carry mine with me everywhere I go.  I could go on and on about how many times it’s saved me, but for everyone’s sakes I’ll restrain myself.

The next thing he wanted to know was how well my BlackBerry car charger worked.  In particular, he wanted to know if it would work as well as the regular BlackBerry charger.  He spends three hours a day in his car driving to work and back, and since he doesn’t always remember to charge his BlackBerry at home, he figured it would be a good way for him to make sure that his BlackBerry was always charged.

He was thinking that instead of charging it at home, he would just always charge it as soon as he got into the car.  You know, turn on ignition, check your mirrors, plug in BlackBerry.  An automatic sort of thing.

Now, the truth is that I wasn’t all into this plan, for several reasons.  One is that I really don’t know how well it would work.  A BlackBerry car charger is definitely not as powerful as a regular charger.  It’s an emergency item, and it’s not intended to be your go-to charger.

The BlackBerry car charger only provides about two thirds of the electrical charge that you would get from the regular wall charger.  And that means that you’d have to let it charge about 50% longer on the car charger than on the wall charger to get the same amount of charge.

You also really should keep your BlackBerry turned off while you’re charging it.  This will really extend you’re battery life, especially if you charge it at night.  I said to my friend, maybe he could make it more like a brush your teeth, charge your BlackBerry habit, but he said he usually doesn’t brush his teeth at night.  How male is that!?

But another reason that I don’t think that using your BlackBerry car charger as your main charger for your BlackBerry is such a hot idea is that  most people use their BlackBerry in the car a lot more than they realize.

I told my friend that he’s going to want to be able to talk on it for those hours that he’s in the car.  And while you can talk on it while it’s charging that means that one, you’re depleting the charge as you put it in, two, you’re going to be attached to the wire while you talk, and three, if your battery is particularly low, you’re going to have to listen to that annoying little beep every twenty seconds or so.  And not being able to talk on the phone for three hours of commuting is like having to sit in an empty room full of unoccupied chairs, wishing that someone– anyone!– would be there for you to talk to.  At least, that’s how it is for me.

So the bottom line is that I don’t think it’s a great plan.  The BlackBerry car charger is most definitely not meant to be your main charger.  But what it is meant to be is an emergency back up charger– and it more than exceeds expectations when it comes to that.  So I told him that he should go ahead and buy a BlackBerry car charger, but he should just use it the way it was meant to be used.