Anker PowerCore+ mini 3350mAh Lipstick-Sized Portable Charger (3rd Generation, Premium Aluminum Power Bank) One of The Most Compact External Batteries, Uses Panasonic Cells

I am relatively new to the whole smartphone thing -- I only got my first smartphone in the summer of 2013 -- so I continue to struggle to adapt to the different landscape that is the smartphone. A "feature phone" (or "dumb phone," as my dad calls it) has a battery that can last for several days of moderate use. A smartphone can last about a day and a half of moderate use, and forget about using it heavily for a day. Your battery will run out, and you are left looking for an outlet (and hoping that you remembered a charger), or you are suddenly without your phone! This happened to me one too many times, and I came to Amazon looking for a device like my friends' iphone second-battery attachment, but for a different type of smartphone. What I found instead was a little "lipstick-style" battery pack that I could attach as needed to my smartphone to have an extra portable charge. I was skeptical -- can a whole charge really fit in something this size? And does it make sense to charge from a device like this? I'm not an electrical engineer, but I remember a whole thing about AC to DC to AC conversion that a friend of mine told me once. Still, it was worth a shot, so I got one. In short, I am extremely pleased with this device. Let me tell you why. 1. Portability. They say it's a "lipstick style" battery pack, but you should know it is bigger than a lipstick. It's about the size of a roll of quarters, though, so it's not that much bigger. It's reasonably light, and it comes with a little usb cord and a little cloth baggie to put both the battery pack and the cord into. I wouldn't say that you should carry this around in your jeans pocket -- it would be a little bulky for that -- but it definitely could go in a medium-sized purse or a coat pocket or briefcase. In a standard backpack, you'll forget it's there until you need it. You can even have your phone plugged into it while you carry the phone around, if you don't mind the bulk of the two items in your pockets at the same time. 2. Functionality. It charges pretty quickly, or at least no more slowly than my wall/car charger does. I have charged my smartphone (a Samsung Galaxy Stellar) from about 10% to 100% with no problem, and I even used this to charge a digital camera with an internal battery. In fact, I used it to power AND charge that camera, so I was able to use the camera even as it charged. I'm not sure how much charging the battery pack can actually do on a single charge, because I'm not an engineer/physicist, but it certainly fulfills my basic needs for modern usb-powered devices. 3. How to use it. Okay, so the one thing that it didn't come with (which I sort of think it should) is an AC-to-USB power converter. That said, maybe Anker is trying to appeal to the international market by not including such a device. Plus, who doesn't have a dozen devices in their homes with USB ports at this point? Anyway, you plug the USB-Micro end of the cord into the Anker, and then the other end goes into a USB port on a computer or charger brick. Then you let it charge until the LED light on the Anker turns from yellow to off. Then, when you want to charge a device, you change the plug so that the USB-Micro end plugs into the device you want to charge, and the other end of the USB cable plugs into the Anker. (Note: this means that you can charge the Anker only with a USB-Micro cable, but you can use any USB cable to charge a device, though I haven't tried anything other than my smartphone). Now, once you have plugged in the device, you have to press the little button on the Anker! I cursed Anker's hearts the first time I tried to use this thing, because I didn't read the instruction manual and thought I had been swindled. Nope, I'm just kind of dumb. I pressed the button and VOILA! It started charging. I keep meaning to see if the Anker will power my usb-powered speakers, because that would be really neat. I haven't tried it yet, though. 4. Aesthetics. This seems silly, I know, but I really like the look and feel of this battery pack. No joke, it's just kind of satisfying how it looks and feels. I can't put my finger on it. Sometimes, I just like using electronic devices. This is one of those times. I I'd recommend the Anker mini battery packs to anyone who wants to carry around a little extra juice. You'll probably get a charge, maybe a charge and a half (depending on your smartphone make and model) out of it. For this price point, you can probably get two, if you're really worried about it.

I thought it about time to finally write a review about an Anker product. I am so impressed with this company and I hope that this may help others choose what I believe are the best products on the market. Over the past 3 years i have purchased multiple products form Anker. I don't remember how I first heard of the company or decided to buy/try the product, but I do remember it was a portable battery charger. If I remember correctly, it was one of the Astro products. I remember being so impressed with the charger that When I needed a specific product, I would look to see if Anker produced and sold it. Over the past 3 years I've purchased the following products. One 24W Dual Port rapid charger, four 40w family chargers, four 3 feet lightning cables, two 2nd generation Astro 3 chargers, 2 slim she'll 6s plus case protectors, 11 tempered glass protectors for various Iphones, 2 power core plus mini's, 10 6' lightning connectors, power line micro usb 5 pack, 2 CD slot car mounts and a premium aux audio cable. You must be thinking " what the heck is this guy doing with 10 of this or 6 of that. Every product I've listed, I bought and was so impressed with every aspect from the packaging to performance of the product that I have started giving them away as birthday and Christmas presents. For example , the CD slot car mount was the best mount I've ever purchased and believe me when I say " I've owned at least 10 mounts over the years" and they are all garbage when compared to the Anker mount. I had to have one for each vehicle. If you do not use you CD tray in your car to play CD's then this is the best phone mount you can buy. I've had a couple of problems with the 40W family chargers. 2 of the original chargers had a couple of the ports stop working. I called the Anker support line and all I can say is the customer service is a 15 on a scale of 1 to 10. They sent me a replacement product and no questions were asked. It was just done. I've had no further problems with the chargers and my children all have a 5 port charger as well as one behind the couch. One plug, one charger, 5 ports, 5 lightning cables and I have no more complaining children!!! I started this review to specifically talk about the PowerCore+ Mini. I received the product yesterday and was satisfied with the packaging. It was not what I am accustomed to with Anker products, but it was ok. If you buy an Apple product you will understand what I mean when I say "the packaging is as beautiful as the item inside" and you know the company has put tremendous effort into the small details. Anker is by no means on par with Apple but they are one of the BEST I've come across. The packaging was ok, but I have to mention that the thought did cross my mind that it could have been done a little better. I unboxed the mini and what I found inside was exactly what I expected. A beautifully crafted product that looks just as good as anything Apple might produce. I was very impressed with the aluminum body and the front layout with the led button. My second thought was " once USB Type- C becomes widely adopted and you have only one small connector on the front for charging and loading, this will be a slam dunk. I thought to myself, " If Anker would adopt the Type-C interface on this product, they could likely increase the battery size another 20 to 30%. Needless to say, I was impressed. I plugged the unit in and let it fully charge overnight. As you see in the list above, I have a couple of the larger Astro 3 chargers and I get multiple charges of my iPhone with those larger units. I'm thinking to myself, " what can this tiny thing do"? I decided that I would carry the charger with me all day and finally plug it into my phone after the battery goes dead. Now this was not as easy as you think it may be. I have the new iPhone 6s Plus with a 2750 mah battery and that thing last all day. I've had the phone 3 weeks now and I've never had the battery go dead on me. I've been close a few times, but never needed to hook it up to my Astro 3 for a boost. Driving out of Manhattan today I had my phone running 3 GPS navigation programs and had you tube playing videos all just to kill the battery. I finally noticed that the phone was dead and at exactly 7:00pm I plugged the Mini into the iPhone . 1 hour later It was at 33% and the light changed to yellow. At 1 hour 35 minutes I checked and it was at 49%. At 2 hours the light started blinking red and my phone was at 78%. I did turn on airplane mode as soon as the phone powered up. I wanted to get an idea of what the battery could do and be able for others to repeat the process under the same conditions. In my opinion, the only way to get close to this is to activate airplane mode for the duration of the loading. I was amazed at how far this tiny lipstick charger performed. I believe this is the perfect charger to carry all day just in case you need a boost. I would never replace my Astro chargers but this is the perfect compliment to my collection. :) Summery: This is the perfect product to grab when heading to the supermarket and realizing your phone is at 3%. With the mini, you have a product that can solve the "going out to dinner" and realizing your phone is almost dead problem. I would not carry this on the all day hiking trip where I know my phone GPS will be gobbling up power and I may not be home till late at night. I would have my trusty Astro 3 in my backpack. I am sure I will be using this charger almost every day!!

I'd like to start by saying that this little guy does his job really well, and despite any grievances I might have with him, he is still my go-to out of my portable chargers purely due to his small size and decent amount of charge. The Anker powerCore+ mini is definitely a good product, it does a decent job of charging your phone and it'll charge an iPhone 5S from about 20% to full twice before dying out. There is definitely nothing wrong with how the product is being sold, the truth is it works like a charm and has no annoying tendencies to power on randomly or discharge a lot of electricity which hinders its performance. I will say, however, that it does have a nasty little habit of not turning on when you press the button and when you plug in your phone. Additionally, it takes quite a while to charge, mine won't charge from red to green for about 6 or 7 hours, which, considering how you only get 1-2 phone charges off of it, is a little underwhelming. It also is limited to usb, which means that it will not work for those who have older phones and need to charge them. Lastly, it does not charge using the usb port, so never lose that cord that comes in the box. Overall, I'd say this product deserves the 4 stars it gets from me, however, by that logic, it also earned the loss of one star due to its random and seemingly unnecessary defects.

I had recently purchased a new Blackberry Z10 after years of having an older Blackberry. I loved the features, big screen and apps. However, with the big bright screen, tonnes of apps, Bluetooth, Wifi etc... I found my phone battery almost depleted by mid afternoon. Then I came across the Anker Astro Mini and it was the solution to my problems. The Astro Mini is a portable power source which can be used to charge a wide variety of different devices. The best thing about it, is the size. It truly is the size of my wife's lipstick. So that makes it extremely portable. The device feels solid, not flimsy like other external power sources. It has an all metal design and feels like it could take a beating. To charge the device is simple - just plug it into any micro USB travel adapter (which is not included, but for $25 who cares). It takes 4-5 hours to fully charge and keeps its charge. It contains 2600 mAh which is enough for one full charge (while the phone is still on) of my smart phone. It comes with a cable that has a variety of adapters which can plug into either an iPhone (sorry no iphone 5 adapter with this model), Blackberry or Android phone. While it is charging the device (which is the same time as a travel charger - for me 5 hours from a completely depleted battery), you can still use your phone. It is very simple to use. After getting this product, I bought a few more for family and friends. Overall this is a great product. Well made, reliable, and best of all... reasonably priced. I must say, someone at Anker was thinking when they came up with this product. Highly recommend this product to all individuals with smartphones and are heavy users! Excellent, excellent, excellent.

Top quality battery, purported to use NCR18650BF 18650 cells that represent the current creme of the crop in terms of rechargeable cells today. While it wont outclass a Qualcomm QC2.0/3.0 charger, the circuitry pushes roughly around 2A, a safe (but not the fastest) output that delivers, for most modern phones, a 1% increase in capacity per minute. That's really solid in my book and will perform considerably better than any other budget battery sold in a big-box or chain electronics store. Input is rated at 1A, which isnt the best, but at this price, and given its Panasonic cell, can you complain?! In short, performance, build and price is outstanding. I hold these in higher regard than my Xiaomi, Belkin and Aukey batteries and it remains my daily driver. One last thing- my friend in the USA has notified me that there are several generations of this product available. Based on product images and comparing the dimensions between my friend's and my battery, I can say with some confidence that the ones sold in Canada should be the Gen 3 model.

Works really well in charging my iPhone 4S! Came right on time as well. So far I haven't had any problems with the product. Comes with a small pouch to put everything in. In the tittle when it says that the apple adapter is not included it means the adapter you plug into the wall and not actually the part that you plug your phone. I got a little worried after I purchased it cause I thought the cable would only have a USB end and a micro USB. Only the iPhone 5 has the micro USB to charge but iPhone 4S is different. I was glad to know that it did come with the tip to charge an iPhone 4S as well. It charges my phone really well and fast however I find that the days it's fully charge but don't even use it the battery still gets drained a little. Other than that it's an amazing product and really useful as you never know when you can find an outlet.

It charges my phone battery much faster than screen use can deplete it. It's so small and lightweight I carry the charger and cord (in a conveniently provided little bag) in my pocket. Other reviews cited lack of an indicator telling you how much of a charge it has left. I personally don't need that because my non-removable phone battery is 2,200 mAh. And given that Anker (on page 6 of the Welcome Guide) says its battery is 90% efficient, it isn't good for much more than one full charge. So I just recharge the Astro Mini when I get home to keep it topped up anyway. A yellow light tells you it's being charged and it shuts itself off when it's fully charged. A green light tells you when it's charging your device. The green light goes out when the Astro Mini's battery is drained. I have a thin lightweight phone I can easily navigate with one hand, but the tradeoff was a small battery. The Astro Mini enables me to get through the day no matter how much time I spend surfing the web, emailing, using apps, etc.

Since I have received this item it has been just okay. I thought I was going to be able to use it a couple of times before having to charge it again and that's not the case. Every time I've used it I always have to charge it right after and that takes from anywhere from 3 - 4 hours long which can be frustrating. I'm not sure if mine has a problem or if that's normal but I expected more then what I spent my money on. The Anker Powercore is good and comes in handy I just thought it would of been better. For those who have this product let me know if you can somehow if this is normal for the product needing to be charged after each and every use.