Mophie Juice Pack: Quenches thirsty iPhone batteries

By Flora Graham on 25 March 2009, 1:06pm

For super-powered smart phones, battery life is kryptonite. All that 3G Wi-Fi GPS wonderfulness leaves batteries exhausted, especially after they've starved themselves thin to fit into the sexy form factor.

Enter the Mophie Juice Pack, a rechargeable lithium polymer battery that says it will add up to an additional six hours of talk or surfing time to the iPhone.

It's a green and black shell that cradles your iBaby in a soft, almost rubbery grip, like a friendly alien face-hugger. We found it comfortable to hold and handle, although it added about a centimetre of thickness to the phone, so it wouldn't suit someone with tiny hands.

It has pass-through USB for syncing and charging, which is very handy, because you can charge and sync your iPhone with a standard mini USB cable -- of which we have dozens in our drawers -- rather than carrying around the iPhone's proprietary one.

We have a theory that the Juice Pack is made of Higgs bosons -- it has an odd relationship with gravity. At 75g, it feels light as a feather, but it when it docks with the 135g iPhone 3G, their combined mass is extremely hefty. We wouldn't want to carry it in our pocket for a night out -- its weight would ruin the line of our silk smoking jacket.

But the Juice Pack is a great accessory for a long road trip. We would have loved it while roaming Cornwall last weekend, draining our iPhone's life force with Google Maps and surfing the Web for the best local pint -- especially when we ended up stranded on the hard shoulder praying the battery would hold up until the RAC called.

The Juice Pack is available for the iPhone 3G, the first-generation iPhone and the iPod touch.

Update: You can buy the Juice Pack at Mophie's Web site for £68 for the iPhone 3G version, or £64 for the second-gen iPod touch version.