The AA or AAA lights that are generally available to us in India or no match to 18650(battery type) lights in their lumens(lighting power), built quality and LED life. Not just 18650 lights, but any good brands like Fenix, Solarforce, JETBeam, NiteCore, EagleTac, Olight, Quark/4Sevens, SureFire, Etc., product some high quality flashlights. But lets limit this discussion to Solarforce, Fenix, Magicshine and 18650 vs AA lights.

Here is a brief of what the 18650′s are about:
18650 lights are all tactical lights and NOT generally cheapo quality lighting. If you have a wish to loose your eyesight, just look directly into them and its fulfilled instantly. Well there are both the good quality LEDs and medium quality LEDs(Bulbs I mean) in these lights. But I am yet to see one useless LED bulb from the good brands. Single cell 18650 lights are usually around 220-320 lumens.
(FYI: there are several high quality, durable, dependable AA lights which can be used for biking but rechargeable, high power, anytime, anywhere takes me to 18650 types)

I have a huge collection of lights since years (protecting them as much as the ladies do with Gold and diamonds and as much as Bzeers/MTBrs do with their bikes) and I think I fell in love with Solarforce and Fenix lights long ago. For bicycling, Solarforce is what i choose. Fenix’s are costly, better built but the cost of the lights pushes me several steps back from mounting them on my bike. But Fenix’s are the bikini babes for light collectors. There are several other high quality light brands like JETBeam, NiteCore, EagleTac, Olight, Quark/4Sevens, SureFire, Etc., which collectors buy just for the fun of owning them (most of them will not be used more than a couple of times) but these are outside the scope of our discussion.

The basic Solarforce L2′s are good to go. The collectors however don’t buy full lights, they buy all parts like body(different colors), heads, bezels, tail caps, slings, lenses, Layard rings, belt clips, lanterns/wands/diffusers, etc and assemble to get the best looking, high performance lights which are never available on sale anywhere.

More about solarforce lights: http://flashlight-wiki.com/Solarforce
More about Fenix lights: http://flashlight-wiki.com/Fenix | http://www.fenixlight.com/newping.asp

So here is what i can tell you about Solarforce lights for biking:
The “Solarforce L2″ type lights is what I chose for biking. I have a 2 lights setup on my bike, I’ll tell you why, below. These lights give you around 270 to 900 lumens for depending upon the bulb type for about 1.5 to 3 hours on high mode. Some L2′s (high powered LED ones) have single mode, the rest have 3 or 5 modes. The best option is the 5-mode light -> High, Med, Low, Strobe, SOS.

Why 5 modes?
Because you need to switch between modes depending on your ride, time and situation. For example in city traffic, the Strobe mode is more useful than the High mode. Many times I keep one light in Medium mode and the other in Strobe. Medium is just to be visible for other vehicles(considering most of the city roads have enough lighting), and switch on the Strobe on second light when you want to say it LOUD. And sometimes when people annoy me without giving side by crossing me and occupying the left most part of the road and block me, i annoy then back switching both my L2s to STROBE. They are pretty annoying i can tell you and satisfy my ego.

Where to Buy:
Ebay.com – many international sellers (most from HK have free shipping)

What to buy:

Lights: Solarforce L2 5-output/mode lights on Ebay: http://j.mp/gyWtQe

Mounts: There are several options for bike light holders, I have tried all most all of them and here is what I suggest(look for the mount in the pics below): http://j.mp/gi3jqK – you might get each for $5 and free shipping also if you are lucky. They are not the exact fit for the Solarforce L2, but you can wrap your light with a piece of bicycle tube and if need be use another piece to wrap the handle bar where you want to fit the mount and there you go. Good enough for city riding. Trail riding, I’m not sure with this setup.

If you have the money and need just one light, Magicshines is what you should look at. (I think they are coming back corrected and new after the recent battery pack exploding complaints). Note  that the magicshine is also a 18650 light (4×18650 packed into one pouch which sits separately on your top tube). Magicshines on Ebay: http://j.mp/ijULLT

Batteries:
There are a variety of 18650s available.
Major differences are Capacity and Protected/Unprotected.  For our usage, we can go with the unprotected ones too. Most of my batteries are unprotected 18650s and I don’t have any issues. If you want to dig into the protected vs unprotected topic, check this: http://j.mp/fh57N2

Battery Brands you can buy are: Ultrafire, Solarforce, Trustfire and GTL
(I use Solarforce and Ultrafire, mostly Solarforce, and Ultrafire as backup)
Beware of unbranded 18650s. Just not worth even looking at them. They can give you some serious trouble like blowing up or switching off unexpectedly.

Battery Capacity: varies from 2200mAh to 3800mAh. Buy the 2400mAh or 3000mAh, these are tried and tested.  I prefer the 2400mAh types. You can buy the protected ones if you are v.v.particular about battery performance, life of lights, or are a little afraid of these HK stuff in general. They will safe guard.

18650 batteries on ebay: http://j.mp/hjDEz1

Battery Chargers:
For years, I have tested countless chargers. Some used to work only for a few times and then die.
My wife says, “why the hell do you buy these useless chargers all the time? when you know they are shipping fake ones?”

So you get the point, its hard to find great 18650 chargers, there are many lemons and few oranges. Even the best working chargers might have lemons if you are unlucky. Luckly if you buy from ebay, there is always replacement. So, you need to test the charger for atleast 3-4 times to see how its doing before you can confirm you got an orange and before the time to ‘report a problem on ebay about the item’ runs out.

Here is what I buy for the chargers:
Ultrafire WF-139: http://j.mp/hkacyA (check for WF-139)
Solarforce 18650 Charger Version 2: http://j.mp/g8DbkX (look for version 2)

Remember, if its available for too cheap, the quality/life of the item will reflect the price. Ebay or DealExtreme or Amazon or HK or USA is no different. They are all made in a small town in Hong Kong, cheap to high quality stuff.

There might be several points you want to know and which I missed here, I can add points based on questions coming.

Ok, here are some pictures:

[Show as slideshow]

In the pictures you can see the Twin Solarforce L2′s setup for bike lights, size comparison with batteries and other lights and mounts.

For the Solarforce lights setup, if anyone goes for it, this is what i recommend:
2 lights – $60
3 mounts – $15(its 3 not 2, just in case one of these breaks)
4 batteries – $24 (2 always on the lights, 2 as backup for cycling and other purpose, read below why)
1 charger – $12

That comes to around $110. Thats some 5k INR for excellent anytime, anyday lights. any-night lights?
For that cost, you can get basic model magicshine light i think but in case of battery or LED failures, the dual lights with single cells are increasing your chances of survival. The new magicshines have 5 modes now. low mode is what you need in the cities, and mid sometimes. But if you want to switch to Fast blink(Strobe) mode, you have only the strobe mode (unlike the dual light mode setup where you can have one light pointing little forward in high or mid mode and the other pointing low with strobe mode) and the strobe mode in the magicshine might be somewhere between 700-900 lumens and thats really a lot of annoying lighting for others on the road as well as the rider.

And as i said earlier, the magicshines are more for Trail riding. They will blow you out on the trails and highways where you just want to enjoy more light than you actually need.

The 2 extra/backup batteries that i mentioned above applies to any light setup ( for single cell lights, buy 2 batteries for each light, for dual cell lights, buy 4 batteries for each light) because you never know when you want to use these lights to their full capacity for more than just bicycling. These are tactical lights and can be used for various outdoor purposes like camping, etc. and sometimes indoors too – when there are power failures. Extreme cases – earth quakes, floods, what ever you want to imagine, you never know when these multi mode lights come in handy. I have personally used them in power-cuts, paddy fields, mango gardens, palmoil/jamoil plantations and forests like places and they also make excellent car travel lights (long journeys) – in case if you have a flat tire or need to help someone in the middle of no where. These lights (not just solarforce, any tactical lights) make good house lights and personal protection lights, in case you encounter some as$hole the light physically becomes a weapon with sharp teeth in the front and the illumination also is powerful enough to block the view of the other guy giving you a few seconds of advantage to do your thing.

The best way to use your 4 cells on 2 lights is this: Charge all 4 cells, use 2 till they drain out or get dim. Bring the backup ones and use them, meanwhile charge the drained out ones, so at any point you definitely have 2 cells fully charged and the other 2 drained or sometime they are also ready to go. One more thing, if your lights are 2-cell lights, do not mix and match the cells, maintain sets of 2′s strictly all the time to get the best out of them.

Bought it for the price of 32,500/- in Jagdish Market, Hyderabad with bill and warranty. Though it was locked with Idea network, the distributor provided with the unlock code. Also bought an 8GB SDHC memory card so that I don’t have to worry about memory usage for things like MP3s, Photos or Movies.

Personally, I think the phone is great and is upto my expectations or even a little more than my expectations. After my old Samsung SGH E880 died 6 months back, I was using my wife’s Sony Ericsson W580i, she was kind enough to not let me use an old Nokia phone which I am not so comfortable with. Thank You Sweetheart. She says, the purpose of a mobile phone really is to make calls and receive calls. What else would you need from it (when I was looking at options in business phones which are all highly priced)? But never did she discourage me from buying the HTC and now she agrees HTC would be helpful for both of us to check emails on the go and do a lot more than just calls. So we think its worth the 6 month wait (since I knew it was going to launch) though I had other options for a business phone which I ignored.

Anyway, coming to the features, you cant except more than what’s already there on the phone given the exception of the “not the best camera for a premium segment phone (anyway, its a business phone)” and the “battery backup which lasts only for a day”. But developers at the XDA forum say that the custom ROMs and a few tweaks on the phone will improve the performance of the battery (I didn’t test that yet). But I see a lot of people giving good feedback on the customizations.

Few things that I love on this phone are:

1. The resolution (VGA). I love that!
2. The full QWERTY keyboard. I think I am atleast 5 times faster now when it comes to sending messages, typing names or sending emails on a mobile phone.
3. The Touch Flo App, its graphics and The Touch Screen itself.
4. Browsing and emailing, Best in all phones till now which I have seen.
5. Better hardware, so better performance when you are running resource hungry applications.
6. The TV Out (haven’t tested this yet).
7. The G-sensor based games: Teeter (default on Phone) and Resco Bubbles (downloaded one), I don’t know if there are more of these games, need to explore that. Also, the Pocket Uno (touch based game) is really good on this phone.
8. And all those Microsoft mobile features which makes this phone a tiny laptop.

I would like to thank the people at GSMArena.com for their detailed review which really helped me in taking a decision in September to buy the phone.(Yes there are hundreds of other reviews and videos but this one is really detailed). That’s really very very useful review guys.

“The Touch Pro quite deserves every penny you spend on it. There is no better device on the market in this class (yet) and if this is the kind of phone you are after – just go for it.”

Thanks a Ton Guys!

So that’s about it. What do you think of your HTC Touch Pro?