“It’s fair to say that Apple’s new iPhone Smart Battery Case is not the most attractive product the company has ever released,” Nilay Patel writes for The Verge.
“Like every other charging case, it adds an extra inch of thickness to the bottom of the phone, making it hard to use headphones (including Apple’s own Beats line) and the battery simply sticks out as a rectangular bulge,” Patel writes. “It’s like Apple designed it so intensely they forgot to design it at all.”
“But there’s another element at play here: the biggest name in battery cases is Mophie, and Mophie has tons of patents on the design and functionality of these things,” Patel writes. “Reading through a few, it’s hard not to see Apple’s case as being deliberately designed around Mophie’s patents — including that unsightly bulge.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Jony took one look at those reams of Mophie battery case patents and decided, “Yeah, I’ll delegate this one.”
When you hold an iPhone encased in a Mophie in your hand, meaning most often with your fingers on the edges of the iPhone, the iPhone feels like an inelegantly thick slab. But, when you hold an iPhone in Apple’s Smart Battery Case, regardless of whether it was designed by an Apple peon to get around Mophie patents or not, the iPhone feels elegantly thin in both landscape and portrait use. Try it and you’ll see. It also doesn’t interfere with the camera or the flash and you can hook your pinky finger along the bottom of the battery bulge when actually using the thing as a phone to talk on (which, admittedly, we hardly ever do, but for people who still talk on the phone, it feels natural).
If this case proves to be a big seller, Apple could always just dig around in the couch cushions for half a minute and buy Mophie and own all of the patents anyway. Then Jony could take a crack at future versions.
SEE ALSO:
Apple decides to devour Mophie for Christmas – December 8, 2015
WSJ reviews Apple Smart Battery Case for iPhone 6/6s: Battery life nearly doubled – December 8, 2015
Apple releases Smart Battery Case for iPhone 6/6s, adds up to 25 hours of power – December 8, 2015
Apple Watch increases iPhone battery life significantly; likely to affect future iPhone purchasing decisions – May 22, 2015
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]