I work in the IT department where I work. Specifically I am in charge of the mobile devices for both corporate owned assets and BYOD. I am the MobileIron and BES admin (among other things). I am in the position to recommend what types of devices and accessories we purchase for our company.
Several hundred of my end users at work have iPad’s and iPhones. Many of these people are in the field and rely on their mobile equipment and accessories to “just work”. I make sure that we deploy equipment that doesn’t require a lot of maintenance and require the end users to call into the help desk because things aren’t working properly.
A growing number of my users have expressed an interest in an external battery to supplement the internal battery on their mobile devices. After doing some research, I tested some products. We did some trial runs with this other company and both my users and I were not impressed with the product we were going to go with.
A few months ago I purchased an Anker USB 3.0 hub for personal use. I was impressed with the functionality and build quality of the unit. I then noticed that Anker makes external batteries for mobile devices.
I got an Anker Astro 3 for testing. After thorough testing, I can confidently say this is the product we are going to deploy in my company. The device is really well made and looks great! It has a nice soft touch rubbery skin that covers the sides (and makes it easy to hold). A nice mesh travel bag was included along with a USB micro USB cable (and an Apple 30 pin adapter that plugs into the micro USB cable). The charge indicator is a nice ring of LED lights that show the remaining battery power. Turning it on is fun. You just shake the unit from side to side a few times. Brilliant!
The Astro 3 was able to charge an iPhone 5 from 5% left on its battery to full in less than two hours. An iPad 4 took about 6 hours to fully charge from about 5% of remaining battery. I was able to get similar results when charging my other test equipment (Nokia Lumia 920, Samsung Galaxy S3, Blackberry z10 & q10, and Nexus 10). The device is rated to deliver 12,000mAh at 4A. It was very easy to charge multiple devices at the same time as well.
I couldn’t be happier with this product! The only thing I would think that would make this product even better is the ability to allow for pass through charging of devices while the device itself was charging. This is a very minor quibble though.
Brady MacDonald's Blog 