Apple Smart Battery Case Review: iPhone battery life nearly doubled

Do you spend your days taunted by a battery icon? Apple hope their new case will provide that extra juice | REVIEW

I spend my days taunted by a battery icon, petrified that my iPhone 6s will be out of juice before I am.

You know who I blame for my battery anxiety disorder? Obviously not me, and my excessive checking of email and social media. I point the finger at Apple, and its insistence on compromising battery life for phone slimness.

This week, the company finally admitted that heavy iPhone 6 or 6s users like me could use more power — at least as much as you get with the bigger iPhone 6s Plus. Apple’s $165 Smart Battery Case is like a Mophie, or the dozens of other battery cases out there. Its integrated battery nearly doubles your battery life so you avoid scurrying around for an electrical outlet like a rodent in search of scraps.

After five days of living with the Smart Battery Case wrapped around my iPhone, I no longer feel so powerless. Even better, Apple fixes many of the issues I’ve had with cases over the years. It uses the same Lightning cable as the iPhone to charge, and it tells you how much power is remaining right on the phone’s screen. Besides, the case doesn’t feel like the stuff plastic forks are made of.

There’s just one thing to consider before you buy: With a third-party case, you can get twice as much power for half the cost.

Protrude Much?

Let’s get this out of the way: The bar for battery-case design is extremely low. Most are chunky and made of black matte plastic, requiring you to attach two pieces to your phone. You choose a battery case for utility, not fashion.

Apple’s Smart Battery Case, though still fairly unsightly, is ahead of those. Bend back the top and slide in your phone. It feels just like Apple’s smooth, soft-touch wraparound silicone case, except … with a protruding, awkward battery on the back. The battery juts out as if your phone will soon give birth to a rectangular alien.

Still, I’ll take it over all the ugly messes sold by others, especially since it provides better protection for the phone. A lip curves just above the screen to prevent the glass from hitting a hard surface and an interior lining provides better shock absorption than hard plastic. Plus, the grippy material is much easier to hold and doesn’t feel like it will slip from my hands.

Some advice: Pick the charcoal-grey over the white, which five days in is already browning like an old gym sock.

Here’s the best part about the design: There are no blinking LED lights on the case to tell you how much power is remaining. As soon as you attach it, the percentage of power remaining in the phone and the case is displayed on the iPhone’s lock screen. You can also see both battery levels by swiping down in the notification centre.

Apple even integrated a passive antenna into the case so cellular reception doesn’t suffer. One thing to be aware of: Apple’s earbuds fit in the 3.5mm headphone jack opening without a problem, but my Beats Solo HD headphones didn’t. Unlike others, Apple doesn’t include a headphone jack extender.

Finally! All-Day Battery Life

All right, already! So how much power will you get from this thing? Not quite a full extra charge, unfortunately.

It brought my dead iPhone 6s up to 83%. That’s plenty to keep up with my heavy usage. Without charging my phone at my desk as I usually do, I got into bed most days with 20% remaining. I didn’t have to worry about that taunting battery meter throughout the day. In my battery test, which loops a series of websites with brightness at around 65%, phone and case together lasted an impressive 13 hours. That’s five hours longer than an iPhone 6s without it.

As I mentioned, the case can also power an iPhone 6. Apple isn’t making a battery case for the larger iPhone 6 Plus and 6s Plus, however, because those phones have larger internal batteries and less need for midday top-ups.

Apple’s case is “smarter.” There’s no on/off switch because it knows your iPhone’s battery level. Put it on a phone that’s running low, and it’ll charge it up. Begin the day with both the case and the phone topped off at 100%, and it will drain the case before using power from the phone.

If you use a 10W or higher USB adaptor, like the ones I recommend here, the phone and case charge at the same time. (Other cases charge the phone first.) I brought both to 100% in a little over two hours.

For all its virtues, the Smart Battery Case is still a Band-Aid for Apple’s iPhone battery problem. We need longer-lasting batteries and easier ways to charge them — not silly battery backpacks. I plan to spend the $165, but I hope one day the Smart Battery Case will just be an artefact from a time before iPhones could run for days.

Wall Street Journal