Music festivals like Tomorrowland in Belgium can drain your smartphone battery in no time: you’re filming videos, looking for friends, using the site map and making cashless payments. As a result, by the middle of the day you may already see a 5% battery warning on the screen. To avoid being left without connectivity or the ability to capture the best moments, it’s worth sorting out extra power in advance.
At a festival, a smartphone uses up its charge much faster than on a normal day. A constantly bright screen, weak mobile signal among tens of thousands of people, intensive use of the camera and video recording, GPS navigation between stages and the campsite, as well as mobile payments — all this forces the battery to work at full tilt.
By some estimates, over a typical festival day lasting more than 12 hours you can burn through the equivalent of 150–200% of your smartphone battery capacity. In other words, one full charge is usually not enough; you need at least one more full top-up of energy, and sometimes even two.
To avoid queues at paid charging stations, festival organisers and partners recommend bringing a power bank matched to how you use your phone. For those who spend most of their time in the crowd by the main stage and are constantly shooting video, a convenient option is a slim 10,000 mAh magnetic power bank that attaches to the smartphone without a cable and supports wireless charging.
For content creators who are constantly recording 4K video, uploading clips to social media and using festival maps, a compact 10,000 mAh power bank with a built-in retractable USB-C cable and fast charging is a good fit. This kind of device means you don’t have to carry separate leads, and the indicator on the body shows the remaining charge and output.
Those staying in a campsite like DreamVille for several days in a row and sharing power with friends should consider a high-capacity 25,000 mAh power bank. Models with several built-in cables and multiple ports allow you to charge up to four devices at once, including smartphones and laptops, and also have a display with information on input and output power and time to full charge.
It’s also important to consider how quickly the power bank itself can be recharged. If the festival has paid charging lockers or VIP areas with sockets, it makes sense to take a powerful mains charger (for example, a 100 W model with several ports), which will let you boost a large power bank to roughly 30% in about 20 minutes.
When choosing capacity, it’s worth focusing on your own needs:
- 5,000 mAh — for light users and emergency top-ups; usually gives one full charge or around 60–80% for modern smartphones.
- 10,000 mAh — the optimal option for most festival-goers, providing roughly 1.5–2 full charges and easily fitting into a small bag.
- 20,000 mAh and above — a solution for multi-day events, camping and sharing with friends; such models often support simultaneous charging of several devices and even laptops.
Bear in mind that because of energy losses during conversion, the actual output of a power bank is always lower than its stated capacity. For example, a 5,000 mAh device can in reality deliver around 2,750–3,500 mAh.
The organisers of Tomorrowland work with Anker as the official portable power partner, underlining how important reliable power banks are at major festivals. Attendees are advised to assess in advance how long they plan to spend on site, how intensively they’ll be using the camera, navigation and social media, and then choose the capacity and format of extra power accordingly.
In summary, to avoid being left without a signal in the middle of your favourite set, you should:
- analyse how quickly your smartphone usually runs down;
- choose a power bank with suitable capacity — from a compact ‘just in case’ option to a high-capacity model for camping;
- make sure the power bank itself can be recharged quickly between festival days;
- use your phone sensibly: turn down screen brightness, and switch off unnecessary services and connectivity modules where possible.
That way, the festival’s brightest moments will live on not only in your memory, but also in the photos and videos on your smartphone.