Hot on the heels of the 3200mAh battery for the Treo, Seidio has released the new Multi-Function Battery Charger for the Treo 650, 680, 700(p/w/wx) and 750. This new charger lets you charge your Treo and an extra battery at the same time anywhere. It works with both USB and AC power, can double as an auto-charger with an additional cable, and is small and light enough for travel. It’s a fantastic accessory for Treo users on-the-go.

Why Do You Need a Seidio Multi-Charger?

If you are like many Treo users, the more you use your Treo, the more often you find yourself running low on battery power. Getting an extra one (such as the extended 2400mAh or 3200mAh battery available in mytreo.net/store) is a good way to solve this problem, but then you run into the new problem of having to recharge two or more batteries without a method for doing so simultaneously.

While you can use your Treo to recharge multiple batteries, it’s slow and inconvenient to charge one battery after the other. Also, it’s not always practical to do so at the end of a long day when you want to go to sleep before the first battery is done charging. What you need is a way to charge both your Treo and your extra battery at the same time. You need a way to do this at home and on the road. The Seidio Multi-Charger is a great way to go.

How It Works

The Seidio Multi-Charger comes with a charging base, an interchangeable slot that attaches to the base and holds your Treo battery, and a 5-foot Treo charging cable. The interchangeable slot is a unique feature of the Multi-Charger that allows you to charge batteries for additional devices (such as the PPC/XV 6700, Blackberry, and Motorola Q) by buying an additional battery tray (which includes the appropriate sync/charge cable for the device). While many die-hard Treo users may not need this flexibility, I think it makes the Multi-Charger an attractive option for individuals or couples that have (or may have in the future) non-Treo devices.

I’m always looking to take as few accessories as possible with me when I travel, so I was happy to see that the Multi-Charger has a flip-out AC plug that can be plugged directly into an AC outlet without the need for a separate power cord or USB to AC adapter.

The charger also has a USB port that serves three purposes. First, when the Multi-Charger is plugged into an AC outlet, you can use its USB port to charge your Treo using the USB sync/charge cable that is included with the Multi-Charger.

Second, with an optional USB to USB cable, you can connect the Multi-Charger to a USB port on your computer and charge the battery using power from your computer. If you have access to an AC outlet, that would be my first choice for charging your Treo battery with the MultiCharger. However, if you don’t have access to an AC outlet (or you only have access to a single outlet and it is being used by your laptop), then you can use your laptop to charge the battery using this second method.

If you use the USB port on the Multi-Charge to charge a battery using the USB port on your computer, this will obviously prevent you from using the USB port on the Multi-Charger to charge your Treo. But as long as your computer has a second powered USB port you should be able to use the same USB sync/charge cable to charge your Treo using your computer.

Lastly, the USB port can be used to charge a battery using an optional USB car adapter as shown below. Or, if you have a cigarette lighter to USB adapter, you can use a USB to USB cable instead.

Here is a table that summarizes the main options for charging your Treo and extra battery with the Multi-Charger:

The one thing you need to remember when connecting the Multi-Charge to a USB or AC power source is that the switch on the Multi-Charger must be set to the correct power source. I’m not sure if anything bad happens if you don’t set this switch correctly, but it would be nice if the Multi-Charger would automatically detect the power source and this switch wasn’t necessary.

Power Up

The Multi-Charger has an LED on the top that indicates the status of the charger. When you first plug it in to a power source, the LED is green to indicate that the charger has power. When a batter is inserted, the LED turns red to indicate the battery is being charged and once the battery is fully-charged the LED turns green again.

After using the Multi-Charge for a few days, I realized that while the simple red/green LED was effective, it really didn’t provide as much information about the charging status of the battery as I would have liked to see.

For example, if a battery is in the slot and the LED is green, this could mean that the battery is fully charged or it could mean that the battery is not being charged because it is not properly inserted and the Multi-Charger doesn’t know it is there.

There is also no way to know how far the battery is in the charging process. All you know is that the battery is either still charging because the LED is red, or it is fully charged because the LED is green. Since it usually seems that the last 10% or 20% of the charging cycle takes the longest, I would really like to know when a battery is 80% or 90% charged so I can start charging a second battery. This became especially important for me because there were a few times I noticed that when a battery was almost fully charged (showing 99% charged when in my Treo), the LED on the Multi-Charger would flicker between red and green as I pushed on the battery while it was in the charger. I eventually concluded that if the LED changed color like this it meant that the battery was almost fully charged even when the LED was red.

Another area of performance I care about with battery charging devices is how long it takes to charge my Treo’s battery. I’ve used other USB and AC battery chargers in the past and some took much longer to charge a battery than others. Ideally, I want to recharge my Treo and an extra battery from a nearly empty to a fully charged state overnight (about 7 to 8 hours). While I didn’t take detailed measurements, I found that if my battery level was below 30 or 40% before going to bed, the battery might not be fully charged (indicated by the green LED) by the time I woke up in the morning when using the Seidio MultiCharger. And recharging a fully drained 3200mAh battery will take even longer. So while the MultiCharger provides a great way to charge an extra battery while you continue to use your Treo and it offers flexible charging options, it might not satisfy all of your needs if you must recharge your batteries as quickly as possible.

Conclusion

Ever since I purchased a second battery for my Treo I have wanted to get a standalone battery charger so I could charge the extra battery and still use my Treo without being tied to an outlet. Having used the Seidio MultiCharger for several days now, I think the Seidio Multi-Charger offers a great combination of flexibility, functionality and convenience.

With a built-in AC plug and the included USB Treo charging cable, you have everything you need to recharge both your Treo and an extra battery. And with the optional USB to USB cable or a USB to Car charging cable, you have even more options for charging your Treo and extra battery.

I’m not sure how many people will take advantage of the interchangeable battery slots, but I like the fact that Seidio chose this approach because it means that you may still use the charger even if you switch devices in the future. And it’s a great selling point for anyone that uses both a Treo and another smartphone because you can charge both devices with a single charger.

Overall I would say that the Seidio MultiCharger is the most flexible Treo battery charging system I’ve seen.

Pros

• Support for both AC and USB charging methods provides maximum flexibility for charging your Treo and extra batteries

• Includes a 5-foot Treo sync/charge cable so you can charge your Treo and an extra battery at the same time and still use your Treo while it is charging.
• The interchangeable slot allows the charger to be used with a variety of different devices with just the purchase of the additional battery tray

Cons

• The LED charging status indicator, either red or green, is temperamental as it approaches a full charge and should be more accurate and more informative.

• The charging base seems like it could be smaller and more compact.
• The MultiCharger takes longer to recharge a battery than using the standard Palm AC adapter.

Tested using Treo 650, 700p, 680. Also tested using Palm 1800mAh batteries and Seidio 3200mAh battery.

Related Links

Seidio Multi-Function Battery Charger

Treo Batteries and Battery Chargers

Treo Discussion Forum

Filed under: Accessory reviews