You're on a field trip with no energy source nearby and your cellphone is nearly dead? No problem because as I discovered today, there is no need to have a power socket to plug your handset charger in. If you have one of those hand-crank flashlights available at any electronic retailer for under 10 dollars you are saved.

Of course you will have to do some hot wiring to make it work but the entire procedure is a child's play if you follow the instructions provided by metacafe.com's user 'kipkay' in the video he posted.

As you will be able to see in its demonstration, the thing works like a charm so you can say good bye to the situations when you find yourself in some remote place without any means of communication because your cellphone had as much power as a brick.

Most probably you'll find the instructions very easy to follow and, if you also happen to have a cat to assist you (as kipkay is in the video bellow), moding the phone charger and the hand-crank flashlight to suit your handset charging needs will get to be as easy as a piece of pie.

Although this might seem to be quite a breakthrough way of charging one's phone, some sources told me that these type of flashlights are already available in stores with the charging ability built-in.

I can't say for sure if that is true but one thing I can tell you: if you can't get your hands on one of the flashlights that already have this special ability, 'kipkay' surely makes it easy for you to modify a regular one so it can save your handset's life (and maybe yours) in emergency situations.

Take a look and decide for yourself if this tutorial is useful or not: