There is a thriving aftermarket for smartphone cases, some of which just offer protection while others contain a battery that can recharge your phone. In this review, we looked at six of them.
The iPhone 6 has pretty impressive battery life, but there are many apps out there that are downright battery hogs. You can take advantage of battery management apps, such as Battery Manager, Battery Doctor and Battery Life Pro, which look for battery hogging apps and make suggestions on how to maximize battery life, like shutting off Wi-Fi.
Still, you can run down your battery pretty quickly if you do certain things, like gaming, watching videos, or even setting your screen brightness too high. If you don’t have a USB cable to charge your phone at your desk or in your car, you could be out of luck.
That’s where the battery cases come in. Besides substituting as a protective case, they can also give your iPhone a complete recharge if it runs down. They all operate the same way. The bottom piece plugs into your iPhone’s Lightning connector and then the top piece snaps on, holding the phone in place. Some phones have the “top” piece on the top of the iPhone, where the ear speaker is located, while others have a top that snaps around the phone length-wise.
When your iPhone battery gets low, hit a button on the case and it will recharge your phone from its own power store, even as you use the phone. With one exception, every case requires a USB extension cable, so you can’t use the Apple issued cable in order to re-charge the battery. However, every extension cable works with your computer so you don’t have to remove the phone from the case to connect to iTunes. This is a nice change. Older Mophies required you to remove the phone from the case and use the Apple cable to connect to iTunes.
Also, all but one use a 3.5mm phone headset extension cable, since they add some length to the bottom and a regular phone headset plug won’t reach.
Each of the six cases was slightly different and each had something unique that made it appealing. There was no one single case that dominated the others.
They are all fairly close in dimensions, averaging about 2.8 inches wide, 6 inches tall and 0.60 inches thick. Weight varied from 3.4 to 4.2 ounces. It’s interesting to note that the Mophie, which is the most popular brand out there, has the lowest battery capacity at 2,750 mAh. Others were in the 3,000-3,200 mAh range.
In every instance, I ran an iPhone 6 down to a complete battery drain, then plugged it into the case and hit the recharge button. Then we measure the time from a zero charge to full capacity. One thing to note about the iPhone, it really drags those last 5% out. With virtually every case, the phone was recharged at a rate of about 1% per minute up to the low 90% range. It was the last 10% where there was any variance.
Here are the results:
Mophie Juice Pack Air
Price: $99.95
Recharge time: 1 hour, 53 minutes.
Strengths: Draws from the battery pack instead of the iPhone, fast recharge.
Weaknesses: Biggest case, lowest charge.
Mophie is the best-known, most widely available vendor. It has a unique feature that in addition to recharging your phone, you can also set it so that as you use the phone, it draws power from its own battery first, and when that runs out, it switches to the iPhone.
Mophie has multiple products, including the Juice Pack Plus and Juice Pack Ultra, which feature hardened shells and higher battery capacity (3300mAh and 3950mAh, respectively), and there is also the Space Pack, a standard issue case with extra flash storage. It’s available in 32GB ($149.95), 64GB ($199.95) and 128GB ($299.95). That’s something the others don’t offer.
It had the second-quickest charge at 1:53, with one power light left on completion, meaning it had 20% or less power left. My problem with the Mophie was aesthetics. It was the largest case, especially at the bottom, where there was an unnecessary space between the phone and case. It was the heaviest and clumsiest in my pocket and in my hand and when I snapped the top of the case on, it would switch the phone volume off.
Rocketcase Afterburner
Price: $40
Recharge time: 2 hours, 7 minutes.
Strength: Cheapest, uses the iPhone cable and earbud headset instead of an extension
Weakness: Flaky, slowest to charge
Rocketcase has price on its side, by a good margin. At $40 it’s by far the cheapest of the devices, but only available by mail order, and they took their sweet time delivering it. It came three weeks after the order was placed.
Aside from price, Rocketcase has three more unique features going for it. First, it is the only case that lets you use the white Thunderbolt cable from Apple. Second, you can plug standard earbuds or headset cable straight into the phone. Every other phone required a 3.5mm headphone extender. And last, it had a kickstand to hold the phone up for viewing.
The problems were its slowest charge time and also the charge button didn’t always work. It’s on the side of the case and I had to press and hold multiple times before the charge finally kicked in. Plus, the documentation is really lacking.
Incipio Offgrid Express
Price: $79.99
Recharge time: 2 hours, 4 minutes
Strength: Good manual, lots of power leftover after a full iPhone recharge, long charge cable
Weakness: Heavy, slow to charge
The Incipio had some things going for it aside from the case; it had a very long USB extension cable and the best manual of the bunch. As for the case itself, it had five lights instead of four, and when it was done charging it had two power lights left on, meaning between 20% and 40% charge was left.
On the down side, it’s almost as large and equally heavy as the Mophie and it took a long time to finish off the last 10% of charging. But at $79.99, it’s $20 cheaper than a Mophie.
iBattz Refuel Invictus
Price: $99.95
Recharge time: 1 hour, 52 minutes
Strength: Removable battery, fastest recharge
Weakness: Dubious quality
Refuel Invictus had one thing going for it none of the others had, and I’m really surprised only one case has this: a removable battery. We all complain about Apple making the battery non-removable, but only one battery case maker thought to do it? At 3200 mAh, it’s also the highest capacity battery, and the fastest recharger of the six.
I also had the most problems with Invictus. The first battery would not recharge to full even after 12 hours. The second one worked fine. Then I tried replacing the battery and the plastic top of one battery came off. So much for that glue. In struggling to get a second battery in place, the gold pins where the battery makes contact bent rather easily. Now I build my own PCs so I know to be gentle. Maybe I just had bad luck or maybe they need a new supplier.
Lenmar Maven
Price: $99.95
Recharge time: 2 hours, 2 minutes
Strength: Very good manual, lightest case, coolest case
Weakness: Slower charge, but not by much
Lenmar is hopping on the zombie bandwagon with its branding and product looks, and why not? You need something to stick out these days. In that regard, this case has something of a cool factor in that they tried to be a little different.
The case is blood red, not black like everyone else (although iBattz has some aluminum). The power lights are green arrows instead of boring, tiny white dots of light like the others. The manual is very good and it is the lightest of the cases.
The only real negative is the slow charge and the price is on the top end of the spectrum.
Trianium Battery Case
Price: $79.99
Recharge time: 2 hours
Strength: Smallest, lightest, felt best in my hand
Weakness: Case can be a nuisance to remove
This case became my favorite because it felt the best when holding it. It was just the right size and weight for me. Its recharge time was right in the middle of the highs and lows and it had 25% or less charge remaining when it was done.
The case can be a bit difficult to remove and the manual is something of a joke. It’s more like a folded pamphlet. But the price is right, the charge is right, it has a nice, large charge button (many of the others have tiny buttons that are actually a nuisance to press), and it’s now my go-to case. I hope they follow Mophie in selling cases with extra capacity because I really regret buying the 16GB iPhone.
Conclusion
There really isn’t one case that I would say avoid. All have pluses and all have annoying minuses. The Rocketcase power button drove me up a wall. iBattz has a blinding bright power indicator that you don’t want if you keep your phone in your bedroom. Mophie has the most unwieldy case, and when you put it on, it shuts off the sound switch. And so on.
The low-high of recharge time ranges from 1:52 and 2:07, a 15 minute spread, and as I said before, most of them will get you from completely empty to 90% charge in 90 minutes. It’s those last few percentages that separated them, and I don’t consider them an issue.
The prices are all close, but some of you may want to save $20 and skip the $99 cases. Rocketcase certainly has the price argument sewn up tight. The Lenmar case is a bit pricey for what is an unremarkable case, but it does look cool when everyone else has black cases.
The bottom line is they all live up to their promise of fully recharging an iPhone 6 with power to spare. It will likely come down to price and taste since they are so even in other ways.
