Top products from r/Ingress

The newest generation Anker 3e (10,000 mAh) actually comes with a pretty decent cable that is reasonably short (long cables annoy me since they just have to go from my back pocket to my phone, which is barely half a meter when I am holding it and walking, and so one meter cables end up dangling and risk catching on things). I have actually tried a bit to figure out where I can buy just this cable (as it does eventually break) and have been unsuccessful. It is a good cable though and supports 2A charging with no issues. In the past I have just thrown out the Anker cables.

I do not care for the monoprice thicker cables. There are plenty of thinner ones that support 2A charging and are much more flexible and thus easier to use. I've discarded most of the monoprice ones I have simply because they were too thick and inflexible.

The best cable I have found is made by samsung. It supports 2A charging, is flexible, lasts a long time, comes in various lengths, and the micro USB connector (that goes into the phone) has just the right amount of feedback as you insert it. Links: [5ft version] [3ft version]

I own three Anker 3E (2 old, one latest gen), a Gorilla 13k mAh (do not like), three Anker 3200 mAh, and two Anker 2600 mAh lipstick batteries (use them with bike). I use these to charge my various devices, plus hotspots and other agents' devices (since someone will inevitably forget a battery). I have spent a long time trying to find the "perfect" cable, and so far certain Samsung-branded ones are the best I've found (that can be bought on the retail market).

A small disclaimer if you buy the cables I linked above: they are often sold by some third party, and they are likely coming from the same factory Samsung uses, but may not be through Samsung. They are inexpensive on Amazon, and the attention to detail in your order will show this... I have ordered 8 of them at one time and had 7 show up being the correct length, one being a wrong length (but still the right brand of cable), and then within a week or so one or two of them died. I have probably bought around 15 of them now, and I've only had two of them die, and only one time had one of the wrong length sent. So my advice is just "buy a few" since they are $4, and consider them disposable.

EDIT: on further consideration, maybe the best gift you could give your partner (or anyone who plays ingress) is a two amp charger, assuming they don't have one. Unlike a cable, where preferences may differ, we all want our phones and batteries to charge fast, and not all chargers are the same. The USB standard is 5V (five volts) and chargers generally follow this (usually between 4.5 and 5.5V), but they output at varying amperages. Voltage multiplied with amperage gives you wattage ("power"). So the amperage is important here. A lot of oem phone chargers will be something like .7A or .8A, and the better ones seem to be around 1.2A. I am basing this off of the 15-20 that I've accumulated and keep in a drawer (never using, but saving for "someday, just in case" because I am a weirdo). There are 2A or 2.1A chargers (I infer 2.1A is the maximum allowable amperage by the USB standard), but almost always they have to be purchased from a third party manufacturer like Anker that is marketing to folks like us. I own a few of these, and would recommend either the Anker one or the HP Touchpad charger, which is one of the few OEM 2A chargers that I've seen. I own two of the latter, one of the former. All work superbly (Touchpad charger also comes with a pretty decent cable that I like only slightly less than the Samsung ones). This is even more important because if you own a big Anker or similar battery, it will take forever to charge at 1A or .8A or whatever the 'random USB charger you have laying around' outputs. The Anker 3E is 10000mAh (the thousands in "10,000" and the "milli" in mAh cancel out), making it 10 amp hour, meaning that if your USB charger outputs at 1A and the battery is dead, it will take 10 hours for a full charge. A 2A charger cuts this to 5 hours. That is a really big difference — one of those means "overnight" to me, and the other means "while I am out playing ingress on my spare battery". In practical terms if you're obsessed with the game, it means things go a lot smoother if you can charge at least 2 devices (e.g. a battery and a phone) at 2A and you have at least 2 batteries. I played this game for several hours a day for months without knowing about 2A charging, and it would have made my life soooo much easier if someone had explained this all to me. It wasn't until I noticed that my phone and Anker battery "seemed to charge a lot faster on my HP Touchpad charger" that I carefully read the fine print on the regular chargers laying around my apartment and then compared those to the googled results for the Touchpad.

Now that I've produced a wall of text, the last thing I'll mention is that several devices on the market have a fast-charging technology built into them. They can go from empty to 60% or 80% charged (or something like this) in a very short time, like 20-30 minutes. When I first heard this I assumed it was some crazy new carbon nanotube technology or whatever, but it turns out they are just cranking up the voltage outside of the USB spec. (Remember the equation for power? Voltage times amperage.) It means producing a "smart" charger that senses a device capable of handling the higher voltage and cranks it up, while delivering a normal (5V) voltage to every other device. (These chargers are typically delivering 15 watts, compared to the 10 watts of a 2A charger, so they are 50% better than the best charger you could previously use — but remember that the charger you've had laying around for 3 generations of phones now and continue to use may only be something like a 4 watt charger, making the fast charging 375% faster). The newly released Motorola Turbo (a Verizon exclusive phone) in the US is advertising this quick charging, but it turns out that a significant number of newer phones have the technology built in and you just need to buy the right charger (around $30 online). If you own a Nexus 6, Note Edge, Note 4, Desire Eye, (newest) Moto X, Z3 (tablet, compact, and regular), Z2 (regular + tablet), HTC ONE M8, or HTC ONE remix, I cannot recommend this enough. Playing ingress near my apartment means I no longer need an Anker with me. I can play for an hour or two, be at half charge on my M8, come home to get warm for a bit (+plug in my phone), and in 20-30 minutes my phone's battery looks like I'd never played any Ingress.

I have these gloves, recommended by The Wirecutter. Not super thick, but they do fine for my area. They have very good grip on the palm so I'm not scared of dropping mine phone, and I haven't had any problems with the touch screen responding.

One con--the shape doesn't quite fit my hand somehow, so they bunch up a little on the pinky side right at the base of the fingers. It's just a slight annoyance though.

Ninja edit: They have a thicker version of them too,

I know it is over $35 but I've been happy with this one. I think they have a smaller capacity version that costs less as well http://www.amazon.com/PowerGen-12000mAh-External-Battery-Capacity/dp/B0085OB0IE (USA Amazon link)

I walk around with one of these on me: Vinsic Tulip 3200mAh Power Bank

And this cable: Minature Right/left/straight MicroUSB cable (get the angle that lets it plug into your phone and go straight into your sleeve.)

It's so cold long sleeves are always needed lately so I just let it rest in there.

If you actually want to bother routing the cables through your clothing or from a backpack: 6ft right angle cable

I've had some long 3 hour walks and my battery is pretty much toast(>5%), plug this in while I play and it has about enough for 75% recharge or so, it's cheap so I'm rather pleased with the results.

I got this for my iPhone back in the day and I now use it for my Nexus 5 as well. Works great and fits well.

Seems like a good idea. Width and height are right, but what about depth? If I stack my battery and phone, it easily doubles the depth. I could buy one for a tablet, but is that going to be deep enough? I might just go for this instead. http://amzn.com/B003UEMFUG I know a quart bag is JUST enough to hold my Nexus 4 in its wallet case and external battery. But you are right about the swiping. An unvacuumed bag makes it very hard to glyph hack.

these are good as well, though they may be slightly more expensive.

Arkon SM432

I've had this for a month on mine now, works really well. Never had my phone so much as budge. Plus I can also fit my Anker 3E 10Ah external on it too.

I use one of these: http://amzn.com/B002PWFSMQ

It's only about $10 and I like the material a lot more - still easy to play through, but it's stiffer than a ziplock and doesn't bunch up when you try to swipe.

Get a better external battery?

I have an iPhone 6 on it's third winter and have the same issue but my battery pack keeps it going just fine.

For reference this is the battery pack I have.

sigh - Here we go...


Ingress creative lead, Flint Dille is the mind behind the 'lore' of the game. He wrote a series of books about a character called Agent 13. It's a noir-esque setting of a secret organization guiding the fate of humanity and the other groups and individuals attempting to work against this group, mix in a bit of sci-fi, a dash of spy craft and there you go.


Some of the core concepts of this series was later pulled forward into the 'lore' of Ingress, including the number 13, warring secret societies, and spy craft.

I hope this helps!

A Ingress branded phone recharger?

https://www.amazon.com/Ingress-First-Official-cheero-12000mAh/dp/B00SDY3RLO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1511160868&sr=8-1&keywords=ingress+charger

T-shirt with the correct Faction is nice also.

You can't go wrong with an Anker charger. I find that a 10,000 mAh unit like this one is about the right balance between weight/size, price and capacity.

I picked up a phone bike mount for this express purpose off Amazon for $10. It accomodates my N4 quite well (including the case). Have a look here.

http://www.amazon.com/AnyGlove-TM-Synthetic-Touchscreen-Compatible/dp/B00AB3EVOW Useful

You may be interested in this :)

Link

Get the phone you want for general use. Focus on the features that are important to you for your uses (screen, battery, size, "bells and whistles," etc.) and make your choice accordingly. Use that phone for Ingress. If you are running low on charge too frequently, get a portable battery charger. They come in many sizes and prices to fit your needs.

A cheaper, similar option is to use a glider glove (or other touchscreen glove), under a separate, windproof flip mitten like this: https://www.amazon.ca/Ergodyne-Proflex-816-Thermal-Flip-Top/dp/B002BDTVF4/ref=sr_1_35?ie=UTF8&qid=1479917328&sr=8-35&keywords=flip%2Bmitten&th=1

I use the Anker 9000. It's between 35$ and 40$ on Amazon. It holds 9000 mAh, so it can fully charge a cell phone with a 1500 mAh battery 4.8 times with its 80% efficiency rating. It's about the size of an iPhone 4, but twice as thick.

Anker also sells a 6000 mAh model, a 3000 mAh model, and a 12000 mAh model.

I took apart a 12-volt to USB adapter and wired it to a 9V Battery, doing a field test this Saturday. Not sure about cost efficiency unless you used rechargeable batteries, but I'm not in a position to buy a real charger.

EDIT: Are these really that cheap? I expected these to go in excess of 50 USD, but I can get this one for way less than that. Anyone have one of those?

http://www.amazon.com/Ingress-First-Official-cheero-12000mAh/dp/B00SDY3RLO

There is the link for you

And then there's Ingress Origins

It's the Ingress Power Cube.

http://www.amazon.com/Ingress-First-Official-cheero-12000mAh/dp/B00SDY3RLO

Anker all the way. I've seen several others in my area using the same brick as me. http://www.amazon.com/16000mAh-Portable-Charger-External-Technology/dp/B00N2T7U90/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425485591&sr=8-1&keywords=anker+16000+mah

I haven't tried it yet, but AnyGlove is a liquid that you put on glove fingers to turn them into capacitive gloves for touch screens.

Screw Anker, I went with this and I love it.

http://www.amazon.com/Ingress-First-Official-cheero-12000mAh/dp/B00SDY3RLO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459030505&sr=8-1&keywords=ingress

also comes with an ingress code to redeem a few viruses and power cubes.

That's ridiculous. Buy a decent handlebar mount for your phone, $10: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FA892IS/. Then buy a frame bag, $19: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Q272W92/. You can carry two 20A Ankers in the side pockets with a 1.5-foot USB cable to the phone.

I've been using this since 2012. It has worked great on my bike and is adjustable for different phones. I've had 2 different phones work with it.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005GSST8G/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I am probably going to order another one because I broke the holder part being stupid. I left it in my car and it fell out of my car at work and I found it broken in the road. :(

I don't know how big the S5 is so I don't know for sure if this will work. But I suggest getting something similar with the band the goes over it holding it down. My first phone holder I had didn't have that. My phone ended up on the ground.

Edit

This one looks the same but says it will hold an S5

http://www.amazon.com/Arkon-Motorcycle-Handlebar-Holder-Smartphones/dp/B004M8ST4A/ref=pd_cp_cps_0

I had a battery case for my old iPhone 5 that I got for Ingress, in my experience I would recommend against getting one and opt for just keeping a regular external battery pack handy if you have the room in your pocket/bag/whatever to carry one.

Several reasons I would recommend against a battery case like this:

• Weight: It doesn't seem like a lot of weight initially, but if you're putting in some serious Ingress sessions on your phone, your wrists and arms will definitely start to notice the added weight to your phone. At the height of my Ingress addiction I started to develop something similar to tennis elbow due to walking around for extended periods with my phone out in front of me, the added weight of the battery pack made it a lot worse.
  
  
• Capacity: The iPhone 6 battery capacity is 1810 mAh, the capacity of the Mophie pack you linked is 3950. In theory you could get two full phone charges out of this case, though you'll have to account for playing the game while using the charger at the same time which will lower than a bit. Most external battery chargers these days are in the 10k+ range for a fraction of the price of that battery case... which brings us to...
  
  
• Cost: The cost per mAh on a battery case like this is extremely high compared to a standard external battery. For example, you currently get a 20k mAh Anker from Amazon right now for $39.99 (http://www.amazon.com/Anker-20000mAh-Portable-Charger-PowerCore/dp/B00X5RV14Y/) vs. the $150 Mophie with 3,9450 mAh.
  
  
• Possible blocked ports: It's a little hard to tell from Mophie's website but it would appear as thought it blocks the lightening and headphone ports. If it does in fact block either of these it can be rather annoying to have to take your case on and off again all the time to use them, especially the headphone port.
  
  All that being said there are a couple reasons to have a battery case:
  
  
• Space/storage: I do miss the convenience of only having to carry my phone/case with me while out about (as opposed to an external battery), especially in the summer time when I'm a lot less likely to have a jacket to stash the battery in while not in use. If you find yourself out playing Ingress a lot in situations where you don't have a bag or extra pocket to keep an external battery in, then a battery case may make more sense.
  
  
• Uninterrupted play/no charge cable (aka the "Ingress Leash"): It's a very minor inconvenience, but stopping for a few moments to take out your battery pack and plug it in when your low on battery is less convenient than simply being able to flip a switch on your case and start receiving a power boost. Also having a cord going from your phone to your pocket (as I like to call it the Ingress Leash) can be annoying and attention drawing.
  
  Anyways, that's probably way overkill answers to your question, but there you have it.
  
  tl:dr; I'd say there's more cons than pros to having a battery case, but every now and then I do wish I still had one.