“If you’re an iPhone owner then you’ve certainly heard of the Mophie Juice Pack,” Thomas Ricker reports for Engadget.
“It’s emerged as the external battery pack of choice for any iPhone owner needing more untethered power than Apple can provide from its non-removable batteries,” Ricker reports. “But what about all those feisty upstarts? Can they compete in terms of design, functionality, and price? Let’s find out.”
Ricker reports, “We put two iPhone 4 external battery pack cases — the Mophie Juice Pack Air and Mili PowerSpring 4 — head to head to see how they perform. Both promise to double the iPhone 4’s 1420mAh li-poly battery life without adding too much bulk. And surely the 1600mAh capacity Mili outlasts the 1500mAh Mophie, right? You’d be surprised.”
Full review – recommended – here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Andrew W.” for the heads up.]
“If you’re an iPhone owner then you’ve certainly heard of the Mophie Juice Pack,”
Actually, no. I’ve had the iPhone 4 since day 1 and have never heard of the Juice Pack. And I have no need of an external battery. The internal battery is awesome.
18-20hours? You are NOT a heavy user then. Lucky if I get 6. Now I’m talking what the iPhone 4 settings tells me is usage time. It occurs to me maybe you’re talking about real world hours. Although why you wouldn’t use actual usage time in settings I don’t know.
Actually I have heard Mophie, Mili and Engadget overlooked the first company to offer an extended battery pack Exogear Exolife. I happen to own all (3) of them for different iPhone 4 in my house. My wife has the Exolife with 1500mAh battery, I currently have the MiLi on my iPhone 4 a bit heavier but does an excellent job and comes in a 1600mAh and Mophie is the smallest with 1200mAh.
My Mophie Juice Pack Air 4 is currently enroute for warranty replacement. I ran into two issues, first when I docked my iPhone 4 something was rattling and it wasn’t the phone. It seems that they battery was loose from the case.
The second and most serious issue had to due with syncing my iPhone 4. First it kept locking up iTunes 10 (could be an iTunes 10 issue). But it also would not restore and allow me to setup the iPhone 4 without removing it from the case (MiLi allowed me to do that and so did the Exogear Exolife). Lastly I had issues getting iPhone or Aperture to see the photo’s let alone transfer them (again not an issue with Exogear or MiLi).
Of course this could be a bum unit and I take that into consideration and I do like the design of all (3) Mophie does have a raised edge so you can put your phone face down and not let it rest on the screen.
Do you need an extended battery I do in certain situation so its not a daily driver but something I take if I will be away from power long or using a lot of video playback.
I have the mophie case now on my iPhone 4. It looks alot better than the one for the 3G/3GS. I don’t know much about the charge yet since I just got it last week. I would highly recommend this case/ extended battery to anyone that is on their phone alot.
Vatdoro – Actually, no. I’ve had the iPhone 4 since day 1 and have never heard of the Juice Pack. And I have no need of an external battery. The internal battery is awesome.
So you’re a noob to the iPhone platform?
I will admit the battery is pretty bad (worse than the ds but a little better than the psp) but hey it’s got a gps bluetooth cell chip wifi chip two processors (counting the programable gpu) 3 speakers accelerometers (and now a gyroscope) and a large full color capacitive touch screen with bright backlight (and of-course when your running a camera app you’v got the camera 2)
duh it’s gonna have short battery life powering all that
my ti84+ (and yes I do use it as a pda I even use the internal editor and “assembler to right machine code) goes months between battery replacements but it has a tiny b&w non touch display a tiny 8-bit z80 cpu and no sound