As some as you will know I’m a pretty power hungry kind of person. I carry numerous gadgets around with me and use them heavily. The same applies to the iPhone 3GS, but for me the battery power in the 3GS is lacking especially when you enable a lot of app push notifications and email push notifications.
So I decided to try out and purchase the Juice Pack Air. So the first thing I should say here is that I actually purchased the the Juice Pack Air. It’s not a review sample of any kind, so I placed down my hard earned cash to try this out.
Disclaimers aside, here’s the review.
I have a number of battery chargers for my iPhone, the one I use mostly is the Philips SCE4430/05 mobile charger. Believe it or not I actually have three of these, and you can get about 1.5 times the charge of an iPhone out of these chargers including the iPhone battery charge which is getting you close to 3 charges on an average day. The Philips SCE4430/05 mobile charger is great on an average day, for example when you’re in meetings and there’s no plug sockets around or you don’t want to get your chair caught up in charger cables, but it does require you to manually plug in a cable to the iPhone.
With the Juice Pack Air, it’s a hard protective case and a charger integrated into one which immediately means you don’t have any additional cables to plug in which is a good thing. The bad thing is the size of the case extends it more deeper.
Pro’s
- No additional cables required to plug into the iPhone
- Provides a hard shell protector case for your iPhone
- The case has LED indicators on the back of the case with a ‘Press Me’ button to check the status of the Juice Pack Air charge
- You can have the case permanently charging the iPhone or you can switch the case off to preserve the power for when you ‘actually’ need it.
- Never be caught without power again
- No overlapping ridge to the edge of the case, you can also see the iPhone’s chrome bezel which is a nice touch, makes it easy to touch the edge of the screen still and not having the case obscure it. See associated con though.
Con’s
- Adds quite a bit of bulk to your iPhone
- Adds quite a bit of weight to your iPhone
- It comes with a Micro USB charger lead. For me this is a CON because I have probably about 30 chargers that all use Mini USB so it means I need to either carry another charger with me (or at least the lead) with a USB 3-pin mains plug to plug it into. Long term this will probably become a Pro because all chargers in Europe and North America are now adhering to the Micro USB standard.
- If you now want to charge your iPhone in the Juice Pack Air in-car you also have to have a Micro USB car charger (these aren’t that freely accessible but will be soon)
- When the iPhone is in the Juice Pack Air case there’s no way of plugging the iPhone into a speaker dock, e.g. JBL iPhone Speaker
- The Juice Pack Air doesn’t have a textured back, although it doesn’t slip out of your hands easily it might not be so forgiving if you have wet hands
- The Juice Pack Air is about 1/2 centimeter thicker in depth compared to other hard cases like the SwitchEasy Rebel
- You have to be careful not to put your iPhone face down on a desk because there’s no overlapping bezel so it means the case is flush with the iPhone screen and it does show the iPhone’s chrome bezel. Although this is most certainly a pro in some aspects like you can still touch the edge of the screen but it’s also a con. I’ve listed this under both Pro’s and Con’s.
- You must take the case off to use GPS. As the case is pretty deep and the back of the case also contains another spare battery, this will reduce the overall GPS reception your iPhone receives and will mean that when driving in-car that you may find you have to remove the case from the iPhone to get a better GPS signal especially in those hard to reach places like Urban Canyons.
- For several weeks the Juice Pack Air was working fine then started complaining ‘accessory is not compatible’ although it still charged when I powered the Juice Pack Air on, however it also seemed to want to charge when I powered the Juice Pack Air off sometimes. Getting a replacement seemed to fix the problem, so something seemed to go wrong with the Juice Pack Air.
Conclusion
Immediately when you look at the amount of Con’s above, you would think that the Juice Pack Air is on a loser. However, the pro’s are pretty good ones and do outweigh some of the con’s. For me I don’t particularly like the extended bulk that you get in depth and the weight but it does grow on you, e.g. my shirt pocket now weighs a whole lot more. However, I don’ t have to have the case on all time time and can whip it out of a gadget bag quite quickly if I need to use it. For me it’s probably not a case I think I can keep on all the time. I’m a fan of the hard shell cases but even then there are times when I don’t want them on the iPhone.
