iPhone – extended battery life with Mophie Juice Pack

Posted on September 28, 2009 by admin

iphone.png My trusty Treo 650 died last month so I succumbed to the iphone hype and purchased the 3GS. There has been plenty written about the pro’s and con’s of the iphone line, so I won’t add to that fodder. I do want to express my disappointment about the battery life and share my solution.

If you load a phone up with the capability to do a lot of cool stuff, it is reasonable to assume that users will want to BE ABLE to actually USE the cool stuff. You can, but only if you do so very sparingly. My Treo could go 2 days without charging; my iphone can barely make it through one day, and that is if I’m in my office working. If I’m on the road and I actually USE the phone for calls, internet, email, etc., then I can expect it to be down to 20% by mid afternoon.

My advice. . . (read more)

  1. Keep a charger in your car.
  2. Get an external battery pack.

There are several external battery packs available. Many of them hang off the bottom of the phone like a dongle, not my idea of a nice functional design. Instead, I chose the Mophie Juice Pack Air which I have blogged about before. It doubles as a no slip protective case and an extra battery. When the iphone battery runs down, you flip a small switch and the Mophie battery recharges the iphone battery. It has a pass through USB connector which can be used to charge and sync the phone so you don’t have to take it out of the case. I won’t bore you with the specs here, you can read them on the Mophie web site.

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  There are 2 small issues that I have discovered. First, the Mophie case has enough metal in it (probably the battery) to mess with the GPS a little bit. If your GPS signal is marginal, like inside a building, or inside a car, then the Mophie case will make it worse. At least it did in my experiments. I was using it for in car navigation and had to either place the iphone on the dash (and then I couldn’t see the screen), or take it out of the case, in which case I could hold it in my hand or lay it on the passenger seat. Not having the battery plugged in was no big deal, because turn by turn navigation is such a battery hog that you really need to have the iphone plugged into a source of power. I use a charger that plugs into the cigarette lighter and provides power from a USB port.

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The second issue is that the Mophie case adds size to the phone, so none of the belt worn carry cases will work. However Mophie came the rescue recently with their own line of real leather cases that solve this problem. This case is a steal. I mean a REAL STEAL. It is real leather, soft to the touch, and it smells great (if you like leather). They sell it for $30.00.
Five Stars for both the Juice Pack and the leather case!
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My favorite apps.
  1. Aardvark Mobile – real people answering real questions
  2. AIM – AOL Messenger
  3. AppBox Pro – 20 useful utilities for one low price
  4. Asylum – like a magazine
  5. Bejeweled – an addictive game
  6. Camera Genius – Zoom, anti Shake, Timer, etc
  7. Chipotle Ordering – Food!
  8. Detector Gadget – a fun toy
  9. DVR Remote – control your Tivo from your phone
  10. Facebook – nuff said
  11. Flashlight
  12. Fresh Feed – for Friend Feed
  13. Gokivo – navigation – pay only as you need it.
  14. IEatOut Lite – Gluten free
  15. iPocket Draw
  16. iWant
  17. Marble Mash
  18. Marble maze
  19. Mobile Banking
  20. myStarbucks
  21. NPR News
  22. Open Table
  23. Pandora Radio
  24. Photogene – crop, rotate, filter, set levels, exposure, colors, and much more
  25. Qik
  26. Solebon Solitaire
  27. Splash ID – protect your passwords
  28. Starbucks Card
  29. Stitcher Radio – create a playlist of favorite podcasts and stream them OTA.
  30. Tweetdeck – for twitter
  31. Twitterific – also for twitter
  32. Vlingo voice – voice control of certain functions
  33. The Weather Channel
  34. White Pages
  35. WordPress – for blogging on the go.
  36. Yahoo Messenger
  37. YPmobile – yellow pages
  38. 18,000 cool jokes
  39. 5,800 Drinks & cocktail recipes.
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