Apple touts the iPhone 4 as having up to seven hours of talk time or enough power for 300 hours of standby. Both are pretty good marks…but everyone knows that real-world numbers are quite a bit lower. Spend a day roaming around town, checking in via Foursquare at each stop--or chatting via Beejive--and you’re lucky to make it through the afternoon before your iPhone battery takes a dirt nap. And once your iPhone’s battery has been around the block a few times, battery life becomes even more of a problem. Exogear’s Exolife iPhone case/external battery gives your depleted iPhone a new lease on life with an onboard 1500 mAh battery good for another seven hours of talk time.
Power up without all the bulk.
The Exolife’s hard polycarbonate shell offers a decent amount of protection for the back and sides of your phone. During testing, a waiter knocked over a glass of water onto our iPhone, and the Exolife kept the phone totally dry. And our phone weathered other everyday slings and arrows with nary a scratch.
Using the Exolife is simple. It charges via the included USB cable, and a single button turns the Exolife battery on or off for charging your phone, and activates the LED capacity meter on the case’s back. The Exolife itself is a two-piece design. You slide your phone onto the dock connector attached to the back piece that contains the battery, and then a second piece snaps in place to cover the phone’s edges, while cutouts allow the buttons and ports to poke through. The case obviously blocks the iPhone’s dock connector, but the Exolife didn’t interfere with syncing our iPhone when we connected it to iTunes using the mini-USB connector.
The 2.1-ounce Exolife adds tons of power to your pocket without much bulk. Heavy users of iPhone games or other power-hungry apps will love its protection and spare juice.
Exolife
COMPANY: Exogear
CONTACT: www.exogear.com
PRICE: $89.95
REQUIREMENTS: iPhone 4
Feeds your power-hungry iPhone. Effectively covers back and sides of phone. Lightweight. Also comes in white, if the unicorn-white iPhone ever actually appears.
Relatively thick polycarbonate makes the iPhone’s buttons more difficult to operate. Slick plastic might actually increase the chances of dropping your phone.
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