Mophie Juice Pack Air for iPhone

Hands-on with the first external iPhone battery solution aimed squarely at mainstream iPhone 3G users

For those iPhone users who are heavy email users, or like to change songs frequently, or are addicted to Twitter, or any other task which requires the screen to be turned on frequently, the iPhone’s battery life has always been of questionable suitability. And with the rise of third party apps, most of which require having the screen turned on most of the time, we not only have a sharply increased percentage of the user base longing for more battery life, we actually now have different classes of battery hogs: the hardcore users who need every extra minute of extra battery life they can get their hands on at almost any cost, and the more casual users who would like some additional juice but aren’t willing to turn their iPhone into a bulky monster.



Until now, the most popular iPhone battery products have only addressed the former: cradles that make your iPhone oddly asymmetrical and large enough to barely fit in your pocket while leaving the iPhone’s top corners exposed, along with less expensive (and less stably attached) snap-on batteries which don’t add any depth to the iPhone but make the device almost unusably tall. But now Mophie, who started it all with the Juice Pack awhile ago (I remember playing with an original pre-production Juice Pack prototype back in December 2007), has released the Juice Pack Air for iPhone 3G. It’s a product that’s not just a battery cradle but a full-fledged battery case. It’s about 20-25 percent thinner than the Juice Pack, largely symmetrical, and (dare I say it?) aimed squarely at the average iPhone user.



Having spent ten days with the product there are a number small details I could throw at you, but here’s what you need to know right at the top: perhaps owing to the fact that Mophie has prior experience in making iPod cases, the Juice Pack Air is well done as a case. The two-piece snap together design comes apart easily when you want it to, but is unlikely to come apart by accident, which is all you can ask for.

The acrylic surface (my test unit is black but there’s also a choice of white or – interestingly – purple) is very similar to that of the back of the iPhone 3G itself. It’s prone to pick up fingerprints, but then so is the back of the iPhone. In ten days of real-world usage, the exterior of my Air didn’t pick up any scratches, for whatever that might or might not be worth over the long term. The cut-outs for the ports and controls (including the camera) are of the right size.



You also need to know that the $79 Air does NOT have the same battery life as the standard $99 Juice Pack. But I could have told you that back in February when Mophie announced the Air; while the Juice Pack has a 1800mAh battery, the Air only sports 1300mAh. That means that in theory the Air offers about 70% as much “juice” as the full-on Juice Pack does. So instead of your battery life being a little more than doubled with the Juice Pack, you’re looking at the Air getting you and your fully-charged iPhone through a twelve hour day instead of a seven hour day. Or twenty hours instead of twelve. You get the idea. Everyone uses up their iPhone’s battery life at a different rate, and while the Air won’t quite double the battery life of a fully-charged iPhone, it’ll come pragmatically close.



As it turns out, my real-world tests with the Air yielded results that were pretty faithful to what the numerical capacities would have predicted: the Air consistently gives me about two-thirds to three-quarters as much extra battery life as the standard Juice Pack.



Or course neither the Air nor the standard Juice Pack will provide nearly as much battery as FastMac’s iV, which essentially triples your iPhone’s battery life. But comparing these products head-on gets lost in the context of their varying sizes; the FastMac is a semi truck, the Juice Pack is a cargo van, and the Juice Pack Air is a minivan. None of them are going to be ideal for someone who’s used to driving around in a sedan, but the minivan is going to come closest to feeling natural of the three. So if you can haul everything you need in the minivan then that’s your best bet. Similarly, my recommendation is that unless you’re going to routinely need more than a seventy percent boost in battery life each day, the Juice Pack Air is the way to go. I’ve got all of these products (and more) here in my office, but on most days I’ll be reaching for the Air as my first choice (although in fairness, when flying across the country last week I did opt for the iV instead of the Air because in that instance I needed as much juice as possible).



And it’s not just the fact that it’s slimmer than the other options. Anyone can make a slimmer product with less capacity. What makes this work so well is the fact that it’s a real case. When an iPhone gets dropped it most often lands on one of its top corners, and unlike battery cradles that expose those corners in such a manner that there’s no way to protect them, the Air protects the top corners explicitly. And it also works because it’s not awkwardly shaped. Sure, it’s as large as the largest non-battery iPhone cases I’ve ever tested, but the iPhone inside the Air is a largely symmetrical product. It doesn’t have an awkward docking mechanism hanging off its bottom, or the awkwardness of the top portion of the iPhone jutting out above the cradle, like other products do. It feels natural in your front pants pocket, which is a breakthrough for iPhone batteries.



That having been said, there are some things Mophie is still doing wrong with the entire Juice Pack line. The four indicator lights on the back are great except for the fact that they’re on the back, meaning that you have to flip it over each time you want to check your remaining battery life. In fairness there’s not much room on the front of the Air for indicator lights, but they could conceivably go in place of the Mophie logo just below the iPhone’s home button.



And while the micro-USB port (yes we’re now done with the mini-USB typically found on digital cameras and we’ve moved on to an even tinier new version of USB) allows you to charge the Air from your computer’s USB port using the included cable, and to sync your Air-clad iPhone with your computer by using the same cable, the lack of a “real” Apple dock connector port on the Air means that if you want to dock your iPhone into any dockable iPhone speaker system you’re going to have to remove it from the Air first. Which is a shame because the Air is just thin enough that it appears that if it had a true dock connector port then you could fit it into almost any universal iPhone/iPod dock simply by not using any model-specific insert.



But what more to say? We’ve reached minivan status, and while it would be nice to get that down to sedan size, we’ll have to wait for breakthroughs in battery technology first. In the mean time, despite not having nearly as much battery life as some competing products, the Juice Pack Air is hands-down the best external iPhone battery solution I’ve used yet. And at this point I’ve spent quality time with just about all them.



My rating for the Air is a rather lofty 4.5 stars out of five – but with the understanding that I want Mophie to keep trying to make the next one better.