How To Charge Your Phone While Camping
On a camping trip, you can enjoy nature while disconnecting from the world. But still, you might need your phone from time to time, to call someone or play some music. But after a while, your battery can run out if you don’t charge it.
In this post, we’ll discuss the different ways you can charge your phone on a camping trip, how to conserve your phone battery and more.
6 Ways to charge your phone while camping
There are many different ways to charge your phone while camping, and each requires different accessories and tools. Let’s discuss the common options.
1. Check for electricity at the campsite
If you’re going to camp in an organized area, you should first check if they have electricity on site. Some campsites have electric outlets for campers to use, and you can then bring your charger and easily charge your phone. Some even have lights, so you’ll be able to leave your headlamp at home, and other different utilities.
If you’re not sure whether your campsite has power, you should check their website or even contact them directly.
You can decide to go to a different campsite if your current choice doesn’t have power – it will save you the hustle of trying to charge your phone and electrical devices.
2. Use a power bank
A power bank is a reliable and comfortable way to charge your phone. They don’t take up a lot of space and provide you with anything from a little boost of battery to multiple full charges.
There are a lot of different models with different features you can choose from. I’d specifically look at the number of charges of the power band, how it holds over time, the number of USB ports is has, and how fast it can charge your device.
Most phones nowadays have batteries of 4000-5000 mAh (which is the battery capacity units of measurement), whereas some power banks can have around 20000 mAh. This means these power banks can fully charge the phone 4-5 times.
I have a 20000 mAh power bank by Xiaomi, and I’m very happy with it – I have had it for years, and it’s still reliable and holds its capacity. The only issue I see with it is the micro-USB charging port it has, but newer models probably already have a type C port.
If you decide to use a power bank, make sure to charge it beforehand, the day before going on the trip. You don’t want to get to a situation where you need to charge your phone, only to discover that your power bank is out of juice.
3. Portable solar panels
Another option to charge your phone on a sunny camping trip is using portable solar panels. These can ultimately give you an unlimited amount of power and sustainably charge your phone.
Solar panels nowadays aren’t only giant instruments on rooftops, but come in portable versions as well. The amount of power you get out of a solar panel is proportional to its area, the amount of sunlight, and the positioning of the panel.
This means that solar panels are only an option if you’re camping on a clear sunny day, and are less viable in cold and cloudy weather. To get the maximum amount of power, you want to position your panel so it’s directed towards the sun, and that sunlight hits it directly.
There’s quite a variety of portable solar panels available today, but quality does vary. Most of them will take a lot of time to charge your phone (some will only be able to slow down its battery drainage). Get big, quality panels to create a viable electricity charging option.
You can use your solar panels to charge your power bank, so you can use them to charge your device at night, and so whenever you’re not actively charging your phone, solar energy isn’t wasted.
If you like renewable energy changes, I’ve seen some alternatives like water-based chargers. Solar chargers do seem to be the most common, though.
4. Use your car charger
If you’re simply camping around your car, you can use your car charger to charge your phone and electric devices.
A car charger typically charges pretty slowly, but you can use it to juice up your phone when it’s low or charge your power bank if it’s empty.
Just make sure to start and run the car for a while from time to time, to avoid having a dead battery when you want to start your car to get back home.
5. Hand crank generator
A hand crank generator is a device that allows you to create power through physical effort. This means you’re using your muscles to charge your devices.
You do get tired pretty fast using this type of generator, so I would rely on it to fully charge my device. It can be a great backup option, though, if your other chargers are already dead, and you need to give your phone a small boost to use it.
You can get a cheap hand-crank generator and keep it for emergencies. Some are pretty small and cheap, so they can be a good backup.
6. Biolite camp stove
There are camping stoves, like the Biolite CampStove, that can generate power through fire and heat. This camping stove uses the unused heat from the stove to generate power, so you can charge your phone while making coffee or cooking some food.
I haven’t tested this camping stove, but it did come up a lot when I did the research for this post, so I decided to include it as well.
This stove isn’t very heavy and is actually quite small in dimension, but I’m not sure if it’s practical enough for camping when backpacking, where you might want to make food in places where fuel is hard to gather.
The stove doesn’t have a giant battery, but it can help with keeping your phone alive. It takes a lot of time to charge your phone, but you can use it to add some extra battery percentage points to your phone while cooking.
How to keep phone battery while camping
When camping, you want to conserve the battery of your phone, so you can use it longer. You can do that by adding more charging options, but you can also change how you use your phone to lengthen its battery life when camping.
Shut the phone down when possible
Your phone takes power even when it’s idle, so to conserve energy you can shut it down whenever you’re not using it. For example, you don’t really need to phone at night, so you can shut it down when you go to sleep.
When you’re camping, you want to enjoy nature and spend time with your family, so you don’t really want to be on the phone all the time anyway.
Use airplane or power-saving mode
Many phones have power-saving modes you can turn on to conserve energy. They shut down unnecessary features, and allow you to basically use the phone normally – with less battery usage.
Alternatively, all phones have airplane mode, which shuts down essential features like WiFi, Bluetooth, and cellular reception. These features take a lot of battery, so using airplane mode will conserve your device’s power.
These are features that should come with a device and not an external app you install.
For example, the wirecutter did research about conserving phone energy, and found that both iPhones and Android devices using battery-saving mode can take up to 54% less energy((Wirecutter, What You Should (and Shouldn’t) Do to Extend Your Phone’s Battery Life)).
I always put my device on power-saving mode when doing outdoor activities, and sometimes put it on airplane mode at night, to conserve energy.
Turn off unused apps and features
Many apps and features on your phone take power even when they’re not used, and some even when the phone is idle.
For example, if you have many apps running in the background, they do still take some energy to keep being run. To save your phone’s energy, try to minimize the number of open apps.
You should also turn off unused features, like WiFi and Bluetooth, since they do take power even when you’re not connected to any other device.
GPS is very useful if you’re navigating, but when you camping at night you don’t really need to keep it running, so you can shut it off as well.
Turn the brightness down
The screen of your phone commonly takes more energy than other device features. You can see this by going to your device’s battery usage. The brighter your screen setting is, the more power the screen will take.
To minimize the energy consumption of the screen, you can turn the brightness down. You can also avoid using the device (even if it’s still on) so the screen is kept off.
Conclusions
We’ve covered multiple different ways to charge your phone while camping, and how to conserve its battery.
Ultimately, when camping you want to enjoy nature and spend some quality time with friends and family, so you shouldn’t worry too much about your phone. You can always shut it down and turn it on whenever you need it.