Unfortunately, the IST SideWinder won't work on a completely dead battery. We attached the charger to a drained Motorola V600 and cranked diligently for about 2 minutes. The crank was a bit stiff, and our fingers began to get sore at about the 1-minute mark. We then hit the Moto's power button; the handset powered up fine but died as soon as we started dialing. We then cranked for another 2 minutes, during which our fingers begged for mercy, and the SideWinder grew noticeably hot--again, no dice.
The IST SideWinder performed marginally better with a battery that had a few seconds of juice left. We tested it with the Samsung MM-A920 and got about 3 minutes of power after 2 minutes of cranking. Still, it was barely enough time to make a decent emergency call. We would have kept cranking until we got a decent charge, but frankly, our arms were rubber after the fruitless 5-minute workout.
- See more CNET content tagged:
- handset,
- minute,
- cell phone,
- Motorola Inc.,
- battery
