iPhone external batteries

Comparative review by Bill Palmer

We all love our iPhones. But the more features Apple keeps adding to the device, and the more software applications we keep installing, many of us find ourselves chewing through battery life like there’s no tomorrow. Fear not, however, as external iPhone batteries have arrived from various third party accessory makers. Here at iProng headquarters we’ve recently spent hands-on quality time with three such products: the Mophie JuicePack, the FastMac iV, and the Kensington Mini Battery Pack. Each of the three turned out to have its own strengths and weaknesses along with varying features and price points, so rather than try to rank them comparatively, we thought we’d tell you what we learned about each of them and allow you to decide on your own.



First things first: in our real-world tests, all three products achieved roughly the battery life they claimed. In other words, plug a fully-charged iPhone into any of these packs and you can expect your battery life to be more than doubled. So with that first and most important litmus test out of the way, the devil is in the details.

We’ll start with the Mophie product (far left in the photos above) as we’ve been able to spend the most time with it, a prototype of the device having arrived here back in December of last year (although it didn’t begin shipping til much, much later). The Juice Pack is essentially a cradle which surrounds the iPhones, bottom and most of its back and sides. The cradle adds a fair amount of bulk to the iPhone and also prevents you from using a protective case, although you can certainly still use protective film on your iPhone’s front face. I found that I could still fit the cradled iPhone into my front pocket, although I do tend to wear my jeans loose, so your mileage may vary on that front. The rubbery surface of the Juice Pack is reminiscent of the black rubber running on the bottom of the original iPhone’s rear surface, and I found that it made for a firm grip, perhaps more so than with a bare iPhone (particularly the two rubber bumpers running down the product’s sides). In fact the Juice Pack almost feels like a carrying case (one attendee at New Media Expo asked me what brand of “case” it was), although in that sense I do wish it covered the iPhone’s top corners, which tend to be the point of impact with the ground during a drop, instead of its bottom corners. As it is, the iPhone sticks up a bit above the top of the Juice Pack.



A button on the back will activate up to four indicator lights to let you know how much battery life the Juice Pack has remaining. The beauty here with all three of these products is that they use up their own battery life first before allowing the iPhone to dip into any of its own power, even using their own juice to charge the iPhone back up if to full if necessary. This means that if you start the day with the battery pack attached and you eventually use it up, you can just remove it and stash it for the rest of the day since at that point you’ll be using your iPhone’s own battery anyway.



The FastMac iV (center photo above) appears, upon first glance, to be a similar product to the Juice Pack. But the iV has a few unique tricks up its sleeve. The first is that it has a flash mechanism for the iPhone’s camera. While I’ve found that most users consider its slow shutter speed to be the iPhone camera’s biggest weakness and not the lack of a flash, this does add an unexpected degree of bonus functionality to your iPhone. As does the USB port on the iV which allows you to use it to charge another USB device (such as an iPod), which could come in handy for users who are still carrying both an iPhone and an iPod. The trade-off for this additional functionality? In a nutshell, the iV is bulkier than the Juice Pack. I can still fit the iV-clad iPhone into my pants pocket, but again, my pockets may be larger than yours.



Both devices charge via the same dock connector mechanism as the iPhone itself, meaning that you can either connect it to your computer via USB or connect it to a wall socket using the iPhone’s power brick. And you can charge both your iPhone and the battery pack simultaneously by placing the iPhone into the battery pack and then plugging the battery pack into the power source.



One interesting aspect of the iV is that its bottom slims down enough to fit into the Apple dock that came with the original iPhone. This means that you don’t have to lay the iV down on a flat surface in order to charge it, as you have to with the Juice Pack.



While the iV ($79) and the Juice Pack ($99) have their differences, one thing they have in common is that due to their form-fitting design, neither product works with the new iPhone 3G. However, both companies have told me that they’re on track to ship a 3G-compatible version in late October.



For those users who can’t wait that long, the Kensington product works with any iPhone model (as long with any modern iPod) thanks to its generic design which allows it to simply snap onto the bottom dock connector port. The result looks something an FM transmitter affixed to the bottom of an iPod (see the far right photo above).



I found that the resulting product combination was too tall too fit comfortably even in my big pockets, and I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of leaving the Kensington connected to the iPhone while in my pocket anyway, thanks to the fact that it merely snaps on and doesn’t really grip the iPhone in the same way that the Juice Pack and iV both do. But nonetheless, using the Kensington product felt plenty comfortable and sturdy while holding the iPhone in my hand, and if you’re having a day where you’re chewing through battery life, the odds are good that it’s because the iPhone is spending more time in your hand than in your pocket anyway. The Kensington comes with its own retractable USB cable which, like the other two products, allows you to connect it to a computer or the iPhone’s charging brick.



In addition to its wider compatibility and the fact that it doesn’t add any front-to-back bulk to the iPhone, the Kensington product also comes with a $49 price tag which makes it half as expensive as the Juice Pack. But it lacks basic features like the ability to see how much juice is left without first connecting it up (the three indicator lights are only functional when it’s plugged into the iPhone).



The Verdict



When it comes down to it, none of these three products is perfect. But the Juice Pack and the iV add more front to back bulk than you’d hope for, and cost nearly half as much as the low-end iPhone model itself. The Kensington is significantly cheaper and works with the iPhone 3G right now, but it isn’t as physically stable as the other two when you toss it into your pocket or bag. The FastMac is twenty dollars cheaper than the Mophie and has the camera flash and the extra USB port and the docking functionality, but the Mophie has a more svelte design that leaves me tempted to reach for it when I know I’m not going to need the FastMac’s extra features.



In the end, which of the three products is right for you is going to depend on how you use and carry your iPhone, which features you’re looking for, and your overall budget. I hope this won’t come off as a contrived attempt as diplomacy, but I believe that based on their price, performance and functionality, each of the three products deserves four stars out of five, thus earning iProng Magazine’s “Recommended” badge. Just keep in mind that each of these products has achieved their four stars for different reasons, and before buying I would strongly urge you to consider how the details of each product match up with your needs.



The bottom line, of course, is that while Apple continues to be unwilling or unable to pack enough battery life into the iPhone to satisfy power users (and didn’t do a thing to help that cause when it launched the iPhone 3G), these third-party products make it possible for us to go all day, pushing our iPhone as hard as we want, without having to fret over every electron of battery life that trickles out the door as the day goes on.



And most importantly, the availability of these products means that never again will I find myself at the end of a long day, stuck at a train station in a rough neighborhood in the middle of the night, with a dead iPhone battery and thus the inability to call myself a cab. Buy me a drink sometime and I’ll tell you the whole story. Maybe. In any case, thanks to the Kensington Mini Battery Pack, the FastMac iV, and the Mophie Juice Pack, my iPhone can now last as far into the night as I need it to.