A while back I was looking for a car charger for my wife’s and my own iPhone 3Gs. Turns out, people really hit you hard with that stuff; most prices were around $20 and overengineered for the job. Rather than spend the money, I started looking for other solutions.

The reason the current charger wouldn’t work (one of those $20 jobs) is that it charged using the old FireWire pins and current levels. Because of those, my iPods would charge, but not the phone. So I needed to get USB power to it.

Separately, I was pointed to Monoprice for another cable I’d been looking for and I stumbled across two very cool, very cheap items that wound up solving my problem.

• Car Charger (Cigarette Lighter) to USB Female Converter – White $1.62

• Retractable USB sync Cable for iPhone/iPod Mini nano Apple[USB to IPod] $1.10

For less than five dollars, I have not only a car charger for the phone, but a retractable car charger and a spare sync cable. So, you see, when something looks simple, it really is.

I looked around a little more now, and found some other, similar items that might be of interest at some point:

• Car Charger to USB/Firewire $5.04
• Plain USB sync cable for iPod/iPhone $1.62

• Car Charger Splitter $1.70

You can charge two iPods/iPhones at once for less than half what one commercial charger costs, or any other USB-charged device (some other cell phones).