How to Keep Your IPhone 4 Charged Up at Festivals This Summer

With the festival season now well and truly underway, it's the time of year when we all take a few days out to relax and unwind. We've all been enjoying the sunshine in our own way, whether it be a camping trip with the family, a rave in a muddy field or a simple meal eaten al-fresco with friends and a nice bottle of rose.

If you're away for a few days in a tent - for whatever reason - it can be tricky to keep your iPhone 4 charged up and ready for use. Though many people choose to get away from things completely, a growing number of us like to keep in touch with the world during festivals and camping holidays using twitter and sms.

That's not to mention using smart phones for myriad other things such as taking photos to remember your weekend, acting as a torch when you're scrabbling around in the dark, checking the day's news or locating a friend who you said you'd meet near-the-red-sign-by-the-food-tent, opposite-the-portaloos or half-way-along-the-stage-sort-of-towards-the-front!

Luckily there are several ways that you can ensure your phone stays juiced up. If the weather's good enough then a solar phone charger can be a great and green idea, allowing you to harness the power of the sun to give your battery that extra boost. There's even a solar sleeve charging case available for the iPhone 3G, which charges it whenever it's in daylight, and hopefully one of these will be available soon as an iPhone 4 case and maybe even an iPad case.

If the weather's a little dimmer, there's a great pick of portable power stations. The most promising of these looks to be the ZipCharge, a compact stick about the size of a flash drive that can store enough power to fully charge and power a phone or an iPod - after the ZipCharge has been charged up for only 10 minutes! That's because ZipCharge has specialized battery chemistry which allows it to charge four times faster than a Lithium-Ion battery, so it's more than powerful enough to use as an iPhone 4 charger.