Vodafone and Bloom.fm keep phones ticking, tunes kicking

The Isle of Wight festival opened today and Glastonbury is just around the corner -- yes, festival season is upon us. So Vodafone and Bloom.fm have come up with essential festival gadgets to keep your phone ticking and your tunes kicking.

These tunes are literally kicking: Bloom.fm, purveyor of music streaming for as little as £1, puts a spring in your step with the Bloom Boots, wellies with a built-in Bluetooth sound system.

Bloom.fm has created streaming radio stations for several of this summer's festivals, so you can have a listen to the bands on the bill and decide which ones you want to see, or relive your best bits from the day's sets -- and all without having to worry about the mud.

Even if you're not keen on blasting beats from your plates of meat, the boots feature two handy waterproof pockets to keep your phone dry and stash festival essentials such as tissues, handwash and Jack Daniels miniatures.

Amps in your pants 

There's nothing worse than peaking too early and running out of steam on the last day, and the same goes for your phone. Vodafone has the solution: a pair of shorts that charge your phone.

Developed in conjunction with the department of Electronics, Computer Science and Larging It at the University of Southampton, the Power Pocket is a pair of denim cut-offs with added thermoelectric materials that utilises the Seebeck effect to juice your phone.

There's also a sleeping bag version, so your tossing and turning can keep your phone's screen burning.

Eight hours in the sleeping bag runs up 11 hours of standby time, while a day walking and dancing in the Power Pocket shorts gets you another four hours.

Like last year's phone-charging Booster Brolly umbrella, the phone-charging shorts and sleeping bag aren't on sale, but you can charge your phone at the Vodafone charging truck at several major festivals. They only charge Voda phones, so if you're on another network, pop in a cheap Vodafone pay as you go SIM and you can juice your phone up too.

You can buy the Bloom boots, though: they're on sale next week from Firebox for £90.

Are you going to a festival or are they all just overpriced corporate hellholes nowadays? What are your festival essentials? Wallow in the comments or trek to the main stage that is our Facebook page.