Like a good friend, your iPhone is there for you when you need it. But unlike your best pal, the iPhone has a tendency to conk out at the worst moment if you forget to charge its battery.
The solution is a battery pack. These come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and prices. Case-style power packs are the most convenient and portable. Since they’re designed to fit snugly, they’re phone-specific, so make sure you get the right model for your iPhone. To help you choose, we’ve selected five for the iPhone 4 and five for the iPhone 3G and 3GS. We put each case through rigorous real-world tests, using an 8-month-old iPhone 3GS and 3-month-old iPhone 4. Both phones’ batteries have run up a fair number of charge cycles, so your results may differ if your battery is much older or newer.
We measured how much charge each pack could push into a dead iPhone, then timed how long it took to charge the pack and the phone fully—useful to know if you’re off somewhere and want to go out with as much charge as possible. Finally, we left the guided tour of Unreal’s Epic Citadel running, which really mashes away at the processor and hence the battery—a true acid test. Let’s see how they fared.
Plenty of batteries plug into your iPhone’s Dock connector to charge it, but in this test, we’re looking at case-style power packs, five for the iPhone 4 and five for the 3G/3GS. We list the manufacturers' suggested list prices, but most can be found for less (sometimes much less) at resellers like Amazon.com.
We plugged the full battery pack into a dead iPhone 4 and left it to charge with the phone on but the display off. The battery percentage reading was taken from the iPhone as soon as the battery case was empty. The high-capacity Dexim came out top; the Exogear was surprisingly low.
We plugged a dead battery pack and dead iPhone 4 into a 500mA USB port on our Mac and timed how long it took for both to charge fully. Don’t hold your breath—it ain’t quick. The Mophie did well, but the Logic3 was fastest. It’s not the whole story though—look at Test 03, below.
With the pack and iPhone charged, we left the guided tour of Unreal’s Epic Citadel running with sound muted and timed how much extra time we got with the battery compared to the iPhone on its own. This is where the differences really showed up.
We like Dexim’s flip-case design for the screen protection it offers, though it’s the bulkiest of the ones we tested, it doesn’t grip the phone so well, and the flip clip isn’t particularly elegant.
The Mili’s one-piece spring clip, which hooks over the top of the iPhone, is a nice idea that just doesn’t work because it kept coming loose in our pocket. And the Exogear’s clip-on ring is functional but flimsy—the case is mighty thin, though. Our favorites are the Logic3 and the Mophie: the former for its one-piece design, and the latter because it’s solid, looks the part, and has a nice rubber back.
All five have a power switch, so you can decide when to use the charge in the battery to boost your iPhone. With the Mili, it won’t start charging until you press its On button, but you can’t then stop it without removing the iPhone—less elegant than the others. And all these cases except the Dexim have a strip of lights that shows you how much juice is in the battery. The Dexim does have a light to tell you if it’s charging (orange) or full (green), but the light color changes depending on your angle of view—very frustrating.
This test has brought out a surprising trait in us—we’ve started to sympathize with the American Idol judges. When faced with two completely different choices, each with its own distinct strengths, how do you pick between them? Unlike the Idol crew, we didn’t have to factor in American teenagers’ votes-by-text or put up with Ryan Seacrest. But it was still tough.
While we liked the phenomenal capacity and added use time of the Dexim, its design lacks finesse, and since you’ve got a stylish and well-designed phone, you need a case to match. For the same reason, we didn’t feel the Mili and Exogear packs were quite up to scratch, despite the Mili’s impressive additional use time.
And so we were left with our final two. As we said in the design test, we were equally impressed by the Logic3 and Mophie cases, and felt both were a worthy complement to the iPhone 4’s sleek looks. In terms of how much juice they pumped into the phone, they were practically identical, and they were the two quickest-charging packs we tested.
So it came down to whether the Mophie’s more-than-double additional use time justified its almost-double price tag. Let’s first say that we do think $80 is on the expensive side, and that at $50, the Logic3 is an attractive option if you’re on a tight budget. (Remember to shop around!) But at the end of the day, if you’re going to shell out for a battery case, it’s because you’re the sort of heavy iPhone user who regularly finds your battery running out, so the more additional use time you get, the better. And while the Mophie isn’t the supreme winner in that test, it offers the best overall balance of great design and good performance. It protects your phone well, it’s solidly built but still thin, it oozes class, and it gives you plenty of extra time to enjoy all that’s great about your iPhone.
Mipow
November 04, 2011 at 12:05am
A company that was missing from this review is called MIPOW. Mipow is revolutionizing external power for Mobile devices and has a large range of power cases and power banks.
The Maca Air from Mipow comes in 1200 and 2200 mAh and the 1200 is the thinnest and most elegant amoungst the cases in the market. See for yourself @
mipow.com
bart_simps1
March 22, 2011 at 7:29pm
Ok, so that what with "Mophie Juice Pack Air" the 1500mAh one. What if you do it with the "Mophie Juice Pack Air Plus", the 2000mAh one, i'm pretty sure it would def come first... ?! haha
