{"id":33960,"date":"2017-02-13T14:12:49","date_gmt":"2017-02-13T12:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/?p=33960"},"modified":"2017-02-13T14:23:55","modified_gmt":"2017-02-13T12:23:55","slug":"jackery-bar-power-pack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/jackery-bar-power-pack\/","title":{"rendered":"Jackery Bar Power Pack"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was way back in Bulgaria last summer that it became clear that my phone’s battery was on the fritz<\/a>. Kevin and Ruth<\/a> recommended an external power pack that could possibly solve my power issues, but that brand wasn’t available in Bulgaria. Shopping for another alternative brand with the language barrier\u00a0was daunting and I didn’t \u00a0have much access to to electronics stores anyway. I was also loathe to spend what is to me a lot of money\u00a0on something for which I wouldn’t be able to use the warranty if it broke. Plus, I’ll admit that I have a short memory and it’s only on the rare days that I go out for many hours that I’m reminded of just how unreliable my phone is.<\/p>\n

The phone has gotten exponentially worse and the battery issues seem to make it unresponsive as well. Since the phone was originally free, I thought that replacing the battery wouldn’t be an unreasonable cost, but it was about 125CAD to do that and I’d rather put that money towards a new phone. So an external power pack really seemed like a better investment since it could also provide charging power to my iPad and be used with whatever phone I get to replace my iPhone 5C.<\/p>\n

When I got to the UK, I had a look at the product again, the Jackery Bar<\/a>, since it is available through Amazon.co.uk. But the cost was twice<\/em>\u00a0what would pay for the device in Canada! It’s Amazon.ca for 25CAD with the taxes, but it was \u00a330 on the UK site, so about 50CAD.<\/p>\n

I came into some unexpected money my first night here in Shrewsbury and decided that that was the sign I was looking for to just buy the damn thing. So I logged into my Amazon.co.uk account to place an order and… found that the price had dropped to \u00a310, or about 16CAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That’s even less than buying the Jackery Bar at Amazon.com<\/a>. I signed up for a free\u00a0Prime membership trial to get free delivery and next business day delivery. So that was Saturday night and now it’s Monday and this thing of beauty is\u00a0currently charging:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s quite heavy and more bulky than I expected, but I think I picked the right model. There are\u00a0smaller ones that I didn’t feel would give me enough power (since the phone really isn’t holding a charge)\u00a0and that\u00a0wouldn’t charge my iPad at all (this one promises me up to half a charge for my Mini). The bigger one sounded way too humongous to drag around. The Bar appears to be the compromise between power and portability. I had a choice of the full range of colours and thought the orange was pretty although the muted gold was a close second choice.<\/p>\n

Now, to see it is the help I hope it will be. Note to self, don’t forget to pack it and the phone charging cable when I go out!<\/p>\n

Of course, this is a stop gap measure as I still need to replace the phone eventually. I’ve finally admitted that I’m going to have to make the same sacrifice I do with my computer, accepting hardware compromises to get superior software. In other words, there’s no way I’m moving to Android and I’m just going to have to hope that my next iPhone isn’t a lemon too. I have to remind myself that of all the Apple products I’ve owned in the last 14 years, only two have been duds, so the odds are I’ll be thrilled with my next phone. If anyone has an unlocked iPhone 6 (preferably the big one) for sale, let me know as I’ll be in active shopping mode when I get back to Canada next month. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was way back in Bulgaria last summer that it became clear that my phone’s battery was on the fritz. Kevin and Ruth recommended an external power pack that could possibly solve my power issues, but that brand wasn’t available in Bulgaria. Shopping for another alternative brand with the language barrier\u00a0was daunting and I didn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33960"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33965,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33960\/revisions\/33965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}