Ask your friends what bothers them most about their phones and they will probably say: battery life. The smarter phones have become the more battery life has suffered. While most mobile technology, such as
internet access, has vastly improved over the past few years, battery life hasn’t. There is a temporary solution though in the form of an external battery.
Mophie specialises in external battery packs and battery cases for the iPhone. Recently Mophie launched an external battery back, the Powerstation Pro (£105), that packs 6000 mAh; in other words it can fully charge an iPhone three times. We tested it out with an HTC One X, a One S and an Apple iPhone 4, the Powerstation Pro (pictured left) charged them all fully without breaking a sweat.
For less power-hungry users there’s the Mophie Powerstation (£70) which holds 4000 mAh and is much more pocket-friendly than the Pro. Both the Powerstation and Powerstation Pro feature full-sized USB ports, which means you can charge a wide range of devices with them, and charging the Powerstation and Powerstation Pro is easily done via a micro-USB port.
If you’re looking for something a bit more compact and you happen to own an iPhone 4/4S then Mophie’s range of external battery cases is also worth looking at. We’re rather fond of the Mophie Juice Pack Air (1500 mAh), it’s tough enough to protect your iPhone while small enough to fit in your pocket – it’s not as tiny as we’d like but it does the job and only costs £60.
Mophie’s slightly chunkier Juice Pack Plus (£80) case definitely isn’t for the small-pocketed but it holds 2000 mAh, which means it will comfortably, fully charge your iPhone. We don’t recommend the Plus (pictured right) if you don’t like the idea of a chunky phone (even the Air is quite chunky looking) but if you need the extra power at a festival or on a roadtrip then it’s ideal.
What’s great about all of Mophie’s products is that they all feature battery indicators that tell you how much power is left in them; they’re also well built. What’s not so great about Mophie’s products is that you have to put up with a chunkier iPhone or you have to carry around yet another box in your bag of boxes – hopefully battery technology will get better soon.
Mophie offer a range of other products which we didn’t get a chance to test but you can find more info here.
It’s worth noting that we also tested out an Incipio external iPhone 4/4S battery called the OffGrid (1450 mAh), which is the smallest battery case we’ve seen but it doesn’t protect the screen; that said, if you want a very slim battery case then it’s worth investigating and is available now from Stormfront, Square Group, KRCS, and Compu B.
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