Mophie batteries (part two): iPhone battery spares

An earlier post comparing two Mophie batteries http://brodiesnotes.blogspot.com/2009/09/mophie-batteries-part-one.html

At the last couple of conferences I've attended / live blogged (the British Science Association [nee the BA] 's Science Communication Conference and the World Conference of Science Journalists) I have been using my iPhone, as well as my laptop, to post to Twitter, FriendFeed etc.

The iPhone battery is pretty good for quite heavy internet use and there are some tips to extend battery life from Apple - basically connect to wifi if you can (you can also switch off 3G in the settings), reduce the screen brightness and switch off any location services, set your email checking to manual etc.

But the afternoon tweets included a couple from fellow iPhone users bemoaning that their batteries were needing recharged, not to mention their laptops. Fellow twitterer @IanRobinson suggested that we should get ourselves a Mophie Juice pack which is a battery that attaches to the iPhone, effectively turning your phone into a brick. So I did.

It's absolutely great and possibly the most beautiful gadget I've ever bought, apart from the phone itself. It cost me £70 from the company directly (I visited the Apple store, they had the Mophie Juice Pack Air but I wanted the Mophie Juice Pack as it's a bit more powerful on 3G (I think the Air probably pips it for wifi, but overall the Juice Pack wins on audio, video, standby etc).

Here's how I have been using it.

Charging the battery - I've found it works well if I plug the battery into my laptop in one USB port and if I want to also charge the iPhone too plug that into a separate one. My preference is to keep them separate for charging.

The iPhone will sync perfectly well if it's docked in the Mophie, but it tends to get a bit warm which always makes me wary.

I attach the Mophie only when the iPhone's down to about 20 per cent battery (I've tweaked the settings so I can see a numeric value for the battery display) - I'm not sure that there's much point having it attached beforehand as it is pretty determined to deliver power. If the phone doesn't need power then it might just heat up too much! It delivers the charge very rapidly, much more so than from the laptop, as far as I can tell.

There's a little button the back of the Mophie which lights up four blue LEDs (it really is a pretty device) to indicate how much charge is there - as expected these blink out, one by one, as charge is delivered.