Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Theoretically, a Great Idea. In Reality - Very Disappointing November 18, 2008
This is a great idea, but very disappointing on delivery.
Indeed it's very comfortable to be able to use the same cable to connect to a wall jack, a car plug and a to a computer USB plug - and all with a retractable cable. What can a person ask for more? Well, how about some 'juice'? The charging power is EXTREMELLY low! I have an AT&T Tilt smartphone which probably is incompatible with this charger - though the product description does state it supports the Tilt.
When connected to the wall unit, the rate of charge is much MUCH lower then my original wall charger and is about the same level my regular USB cable. When connected to the retractable USB cable the rate of charge is extremely low. The worst is the car adapter which can barely keep the battery at it's current charge level! I commute about 30 minutes to each direction and at best this charger can only reduce the level of discharge at best! Very very disappointing indeed.
Though it's quite convenient to switch between a charging directly with a wall jack and a computer USB connection such that I would only sync when needed, I would still recommend to stay away from this particular item - at least for Tilt owners.
 Great idea, terrible execution September 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Bought this several months ago for my wife to use in her car and at work. She complained about it occasionally and never really used it much, but never really gave any concrete reasons. She recently gave up and brought it home for me to use on my Tilt and took her regular charger to work.
In a phrase. This thing sucks.
When you plug it into a car charger it barely keeps the phone operational, but it will not charge the battery if you are using it while charging (not just talking - anything at all). If you turn the phone off it will charge it INCREDIBLY slowly, I'm talking about 5-7% an hour. I chalked this up to lack of power from the car. Not a huge deal.
However, when you plug it in to a wall socket it doesn't charge either! It is a bit faster than the car, maybe 10-12% an hour, but the one that came with my Tilt charges the phone in about 2 hours, so I think 8-9 hours is unacceptable.
Even if you could get past the fact that the product barely works, and doesn't work as advertised, when you plug it into the wall socket a very loud, scary hum emanates from the wall plug. Feels like its going to catch on fire at any moment.
I've decided to trash this and purchase something that functions as advertised. It is possible that it will work fine with products other than the Tilt (but I doubt it) and of course I guess we could have gotten a defective one, (but again, i doubt it - its a damn wall plug - how can you mess that up?).
Anyway, I'm writing this review to warn others that may consider purchasing it - if you do, I hope it works better for you than it has for me.
 Sleek and simple... August 8, 2008
I purchased this USB travel kit for my 8925 Tilt about a month ago. The components are intuitive, sleek, and simple. The retractable cable is nice and works smoothly (though I did have a little trouble initially getting it to recoil - I've since figured it out :-). The AC adapter charges normally (what I'd expect). The car charger, on the other hand, charges slowly (I was expecting a rapid charger). Interestingly, I've found that while charging in the car, if I am making a call via my bluetooth headset, the charger cannot keep up. It gets worse if I am on the phone via bluetooth and am using the internet (Remote Desktop client, web browsing, etc.). It's very possible that the slow charge is better for the longevity of the phone's battery.
 excellant travel kit June 21, 2008
Purchased just in time for vacation. I used the USB cable every night to sync my phone with my laptop as well as copy pics from my digital camera. Used the AC adapter to charge the phone over night so I never had a need to use the car adapter though I did test it to make sure it worked. I plan to leave this travel kit in my computer bag so I don't have to worry about lugging my OEM adapters on trips and losing them.
As a bonus, the AC adapter has a charging indicator LED which most OEM adapters do not, usually only the car adapters have the LED. I find this useful to remind me to unplug it from the wall when I'm done so it's one less energy sucking device.
Decent product May 28, 2008
I hate it when the charger is all over the place in the car so I wanted the retractable. Couple of things I encountered: it's alot easier if you pull both ends at the same time. I didn't one time and it took a couple tries to get it to rewind again. And I need to keep an eye on tip for the cigarette lighter as it sometimes "leans" and stops charging. But for $15 it's tough to beat......
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