The most impressive point about the Prius Plug-In Hybrid is certainly its charging time. In under two hours at 200V (three hours at 100V) you can fully charge the battery. And that’s simply by plugging it into a standard power point. What’s more, while switched to full electric mode, you’ll be able to drive around 20km on a fully charged battery. Depending on where you live, that’s enough to get you down to the shops and back.

The Prius Plug-In Hybrid looks no different to the current Prius model, it just comes with a plug attached. It can operate with or without the battery charged and has greater fuel efficiency thanks to the improved battery. We asked Yukihiro Okane, Chief Engineer, Product Planning of the Toyota Product Development Group when we could expect batteries that could last for around the same distance as a tank of petrol now, but he said it was still too far away to tell.

This was the Japan premier of the Plug-In Hybrid. When word drops of when we can expect it Gizmodo will be sure to let you know.

Damian Francis is the editor-at-large for Australian T3 and contributing technology editor for GQ Australia. He is in Japan as a guest of Toyota Australia.

The way you’d use the reNEW charger is simple. You toss your batteries in the top portion and they’ll be ready at the bottom once they’re fully-charged. Cool idea, but I’m not entirely sure that I’d want to plaster my windows with it. [Yanko Design]

The purpose. To simulate that “Damn, I forgot to charge my iPhone last night” moment.

The method. Time the charge depletion so that the iPhone would power itself down at Sydney airport terminal. (For those who don’t already know, I’m from Adelaide, so Sydney is a long way from home.) Then connect the Kensington charger and monitor the results.

How it played out. Attaching the charger to the iPhone revived it, but it took about seven minutes before it was operational, as it won’t fully boot without a minimum charge level. It took a further 70 minutes for the charge to syphon from the Kensington charger to the iPhone. Once the Kensington was depleted, the iPhone registered a 70 per cent charge.

However, because it wasn’t a deep charge, it took only a few minutes of use (checking SMS and emails) before the charge level dropped to about 50 per cent. This charge level was recorded at about 11am. The phone was still working in the taxi on the way home from Adelaide airport at about 5pm, though I expect another hour’s use would have been available had I not played SimCity on the plane. During the day, only 3G was enabled. No Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.

Conclusion? Kensington’s Mini Battery Pack/Charger will get your iPhone back on its feet again, probably long enough to get you through the day and back to home base where you foolishly left your sync cable that otherwise could have juiced your iPhone from your laptop. If you had a laptop.

It bears mentioning there are a lot of variables at play with iPhones. My 3G iPhone is more than a year old (yes, that’s right, I was in line on 11/7/08) and its battery is not as efficient as it used to be. Combine this with differences in power consumption profiles between one iPhone and the next (Bluetooth on/off, fetch enabled/disabled, screen brightness setting, etc) and it’s safe to say that your mileage will vary.

Kensington would like you to think you could plug their charger into a fully-charged iPhone and leave it attached for play time of “up to 30 hours of music and 6 hours of video, 3 hours of talk”?. Yeah, well you could, and you might get those benefits, but I found having the charger hanging off the bottom of my iPhone pretty awkward. It was easy, with the wrong grip applied, to disconnect the charger from the iPhone’s socket, though this had a little to do with my Capdase hard case, which prevented a really snug coupling.

The battery can be attached to the iPhone while it charges from the same source but having the charger attached prevents iTunes syncing. A little inconvenient. LEDs on the front face of the charger indicate partial and depleted charge states. The charger comes with a retractable USB cable. With a $59.99 RRP, it rates as an affordable solution to being caught short of juice, and it gets the job done.

Just one more thing. If you’re going to use it as I did, as a recharging device as opposed to a supplementary power source, you’ll have to be sure to have the Kensington battery charged and packed for the ride. Which kind of brings us full circle to that “Damn, I forgot to charge my iPhone” moment.

According to the author of the hack, the iPhone 3G took 2 hours and 22 minutes to fully recharge, leaving 50% of the power in the MSI Wind battery. The hack also includes a normal jack to provide with 12v power to any other device.

[Prusadjs]

The benefit of the X-Power 1 is that it’s both a backup battery and a charger all in one and you don’t have to deal with carrying around an extra gadget. The built-in rechargeable battery backup unit will be charged very time you connect your iPod or iPhone to your computer using the X-Power 1 and you’ll get more quality time with your gadget:

• Additional talk time of 4.5 hours on 3G and 9 hours on 2G. Up to 5.4 hours additional on Wi-Fi.
• Standby time of up to 270 hours. Audio Playback up to 20 hours and Video Playback 6 hours.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for extra time with my iPhone and less junk in my bag, but how the hell did that innocent USB cable result this:

[X-Power 1 via GadgetReview]

This DSLR battery clip charges via any USB source (like Energizer’s own portable battery pack) and clamps on to “any” digital camera or camcorder battery. The compatibility list is probably high, but we’re unsure if any actually means any, so check out the site before buying. The entire Energi To Go line will be available next month. [Gearlog via Oh Gizmo]

A bit of steel wool held to a battery’s contacts will create a short and start to spark, and if you’re careful, you can direct that spark onto some pre-arranged tinder, starting a fire. Of course, this also works with a 9-volt battery, which I’m almost positive Les Stroud has used on Survivorman, but it’s a nice idea to show it can be done with something we’ve all got in our pockets. [via MAKE]