I waited with anticipation for the release of the Mophie Juice Pack Air iPhone 3G case and supplemental rechargeable battery. Well, Mophie finally released it and it sells for $79.95. For those of you who, like me, have wished for longer battery life between charges for your iPhone 3G, I have good and bad news for you.
The good news is that the Juice Pack Air, which comes in white, black or (of all colors) purple, will add considerable life between charges to your iPhone 3G. It adds some bulk (size and weight), but not so much as to make you unhappy to trade that off against the additional usage time between charges. While Mophie could have produced it with a bit more care to ensuring that the top and bottom matched up more closely, that too comes within reasonable levels of tolerance.
The bad news is that the case appears to impair signal transmission and reception as, when I had the case on the phone dropped calls that it should not have. I dropped far more calls with the case on than with the case off.
The case charges through a micro USB port. I have no issue with that as many devices charge using micro USB ports these days and it synched up just fine with iTunes using the micro USB connection. Unfortunately, rather than mounting the charging port flush with the surface of the case, Mophie’s designers chose to carve a notch out of the case and recess the port. They made the notch relatively small. As a result many (maybe most) micro USB plugs will not fit into the notch. Accordingly, you need to carry the micro USB plug that comes with it (or another equally slim-housed plug), which kind of defeats the purpose of the use of a common port that should allow for one cord to charge many devices.
My experience with the Juice Pack Air prove short-lived, however. About a week after I got it, the recessed micro-USB port broke and prevented me from charging the device. I do not know if it was because of the recessed port or some other reason. I do know that I have a number of devices that use the micro USB port connection and have not had any of them break except this one. All the others have the port mounted flush to the surface of the device.
The worst news, however, is that my efforts to contact customer service to follow up on getting this repaired and on other matters have proven fruitless. I tried telephoning, making sure to call during their work ours and got voice mail each time. While their machine took my messages, I have not receive any return phone calls or emails (I left phone number and email information in the message). I also tried contacting the company for warranty service/customer service through their web site. Shortly after the posts I received confirmation of the receipt and a notice that they assigned a case number. The email said someone would get in touch with me soon. So far, however, I have heard nothing further.
I am not sure what caused the failure of the USB port, but I noticed on the Apple web site that I was not the only one to experience that problem. I also notice in other reviews of the Juice Pack Air on the Apple web site that others noticed the drop off in handling of calls with the case on the phone.
Normally, I do not like to write negative reviews and generally choose only things I like to write about. This device promises to be so useful that I thought I should share my experience with others contemplating acquiring one, so that they could make an informed decision.
Copyright 2009 Jeffrey Allen. All rights reserved.