Mophie Juice Pack Air – quickie review

Summary: if you log lots of on-the-go iphone use, this is just the thing.

Mophie’s Juice Pack Air is a 1200 mAh battery pack / hardshell case for your iPhone. Charged up, it adds a significant amount of usage between charges.

I bought mine earlier this week, in consideration of a cross-country flight I had to make. The iPhone is a traveler’s dream device in all ways EXCEPT battery life. Those airport recharging stations are only useful if you can find an open outlet on one, something that’s been getting increasingly difficult every time I fly.

The mophie, both on my flight and during the subsequent conference I’ve been attending (think 5 hours a day stuck in incredibly boring keynotes and presentations), has been a game changer for me. Take today for example. I was up early, around 6 (thanks jetlag). I unplugged my iPhone, turned the mophie on, and started kicking my email inbox’s ass, all on 3G (The hotel charges $10/day for wifi, you know the drill). Then, I started bouncing between wordpress, tumblr, mobile photos, safari, and tweetie, all in 3G, including several picture uploads. I kept that up for a long time, well over an hour.

After breakfast, I found myself trapped in a stupid and irrelevant conference session, which brought on another storm of texting and email. By lunch break, after a morning of intensely high 3G usage (for me), the juice pack had finally depleted. I took it off my phone, and for the rest of the day my usage returned to a moderately high level (some google maps/gps usage; more email, a few pictures snapped and sent out).

As I sit here typing at 5:30, after more than 10 hours of heavy 3G use, my battery is only down to about 50%. I stuck the mophie on its charger after lunch and left it at the hotel room, so now I can pop it back on and easily make it through dinner and a bit of bar-hopping this evening.

In short, I’m very pleased.

Ergonomically, the case isn’t bad at all. It adds a bit of bulk to the phone, but it still goes in my front jeans pocket comfortably. It has a glossy plastic finosh tjat feels almost identical to the back of tje 3g iphone. I’ve found that the extra size actually makes the iPhone more comfortable to type on with my biggish hands.

The price is on the steep side at $79, but it doesn’t seem exorbitant to me given the functionality. I don’t like that the USB cable has an uncommon-shaped plug on it, but it does work as a passthrough docking cable.

I’m only a few days into owning the thing, too, so this review is really more of a ‘first impressions’ than a thorough review. Those things said, though, I’m quite impressed with this product and glad I dropped the cash on it.

Check it out at the apple store or mophie.com