Mophie Juice Pack Review: Keeps You Connected All Day

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So here I am on vacation in Aruba. The sun is warm, the waves are a bit rough and the WiFi is horrid. Seriously, the WiFi here brings me back to the good old days of dial-up, and they weren’t such good old days.

As a result of the anemic WiFi I have found myself using my iPod touch far more than the HP MiniNote 1000 I picked up prior to my trip. (it is, by the way, an awesome netbook!)

The touch seems to work far better for me when checking email, keeping up with my RSS feeds, and even writing. It isn’t that the WiFi is better on it, but that the optimized interfaces on the Touch just feel faster and work much better for me.

Add to all this the fact that I am having a good time playing some games while away, and the result is a Touch whose battery runs down super fast.

Enter the Mophie Juice Pack for iPhone 3G.

photos courtesy of the Mophie site

The battery arrive the day before we left, and I am glad it did. Like the RichardSolo 1800 I recently reviewed at WhatsOniPhone, the Mophie brings 1800mAh of love to the Touch and iPhone. It is made of a strong material that also feels soft to the touch. A four light battery meter on the back tells you how much battery is left at the touch of a button and a miniUSB port on the bottom makes charging a breeze.

Where the Mophie stands out is in it’s physical design. Rather than attaching to the bottom of the device the way most external batteries seem to, the Mophie “hugs” the device like an open-faced case. No, it doesn’t protect it, but it does allow the device to be fully used. This even included the camera.

The result is the fact that I am typing this on my Touch, while the Touch is powered and charged by it. Even though the battery adds significant weight, it does not interfere with the actual use of the Touch or iPhone. In fact, I tried playing some of my favorite racing games with both the iPhone and Touch in it and had no difficulty at all.

In all, this is a quality battery that was designed incredibly well.

What I Like:
Great design
No loss of device usage while in battery pack
Adds tons of addition life thanks to huge battery capacity

What needs improvement:
At a retail price of $99 it is substantially more than the RichardSolo battery
The only downside of the Juice Pack is that the placement of the headphone jack on the Touch means it’s blocked while charging

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About the Author

Dan Cohen
Having a father who was heavily involved in early laser and fiber-optical research, Dan grew up surrounded by technology and gadgets. Dan’s father brought home one of the very first video games when he was young and Dan remembers seeing a “pre-release” touchtone phone. (When he asked his father what the “#” and “*” buttons were his dad said, “Some day, far in the future, we’ll have some use for them.”) Technology seemed to be in Dan’s blood but at some point he took a different path and ended up in the clergy. His passion for technology and gadgets never left him. Dan is married to Raina Goldberg who is also an avid user of Apple products. They live in New Jersey with their golden doodle Nava.