How to go somewhere for more than 2 days and keep using your iPhone

I’ve been spending weeks trying to think of ways to expand the battery life on my iPhone ahead of things like Lattitude. Fun though stumbling around a muddy field on your own is, after drifting away to see an obscure band (or guilty pleasure) while your friends see something much better and/or credible, it’s nice to meet up with them afterwards. Or to tweet that you’ve just bumped into Keith Allen again.

Fabulous though the iPhone is, the battery life *really* sucks. I’m lucky if I get 36 hours out of it.

OK, it’s not *ALL* I’ve been doing for weeks, but it’s been making me think, all the same.

It turns out there are plenty of options out there, from the amusingly monikered (and faintly rude-looking) PowerMonkey,

which claims it can boost iPod life by 40 hours for about £35

Then there’s everything from the extortionately priced Mophie JuicePack Air (£65!) to the A-Solar iPhone charger.

While the solar charger is only a tenner, it does have some distinctly lukewarm reviews.

After all of this, it finally hit me. How to stay connected to the world, keep my phone protected from rain/mud/grubby-handed oiks* and get up to a WEEKS battery life.

Buy a second phone. It’s so simple. Hark back to a time where I was surprised if my phone didn’t last a week, and all it had to power was a grubby little 16 colour LCD screen.

So I reckon I’ll bag myself something like this little Samsung number. Hell, I might even get two.

*there are no grubby handed oiks at latitude really. It’s actually quite a posh festival.