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There’s no getting around the iPhone 5′s abysmal battery life. It’s by far the least desirable feature. Mophie hopes to change all that later this month when it starts shipping the Helium juice pack, the first “Certified Battery Case Solution” for the iPhone 5. Awesome, right?
A case for your iPhone that promises to double your battery life.
Do you become blind with rage when your iPhone 5 notifies you that the battery is low? If you do, then this is most likely for you.
I certainly wouldn’t call it sylphlike but you are getting an extra 1500 mAh of life, so there’s that. That being said, the Helium adds a significant bit of girth and an extra 0.62 inches in length.The soft touch finish is indeed soft to the touch but smudges easily. So do your best to clean those greasy fingers of yours.
Simply place your iPhone 5 in this handy little battery case and flip the switch on the backside when you need a hit of power. When you don’t, don’t.
The included 3.5mm headphone extension is a nice touch considering the extra bulk in length will likely render most of your headphones useless when using the case, so try not to lose it. Apple’s stock Earpods, however, work just fine with the case.
Tapping the single button on the backside of the case will let you know how much power is in reserve based on how many of the four LEDs are illuminated.
Ugh. It’s a battery case for your iPhone 5. How many times do I have to tell you this? Kidding. That extra backup battery comes in handy when you’re out and about and nowhere near an outlet. That or you’ve left that pesky proprietary Lightning cable at home. And if you’re prone to dropping your phone, you may not have to pay someone to fix it any more.
Bang for your buck. The impression of all-day safety is a tad diminished when looking at Mophie’s non-case battery packs that are either cheaper or offer even more battery life than the £60 battery case. And it makes your iPhone 5 significantly larger in size, even though the Helium is 13 per cent thinner than previous models for the iPhone 4/S.
By comparison, the £75 external juice pack powerstation PRO and duo are only £15 more and have quadruple the capacity of the Helium.
The case itself doesn’t allow for pass-through data sync, so if you don’t already, you better start thinking about backing up and syncing over Wi-Fi if you decide to buy this.
- When recharging the Helium, the LEDs will shut off after 30 or so seconds, so don’t jump to the conclusion that the pack isn’t getting enough draw off of your laptop or an external USB port
- You can simultaneously recharge both the iPhone 5 and the battery itself over microUSB
- When charged to its maximum, Mophie says the Helium provides up to 80 per cent of your iPhone 5′s depleted reserves but your mileage will vary. When the iPhone’s battery was fully depleted, the Helium brought it back to life and on up into the 70 per cent range.
Why not? Actually, if you like the thinness of the iPhone 5 and don’t want to add extra size to it, you probably won’t like the Helium. If that doesn’t bother you, then go right ahead and fork over £60. It boils down to preference: Do you want a battery case or would you rather tote around a Lightning cable/power cube combo or an external battery plus cable? [Mophie]
- Talk Time: Up to additional 6 hours on 3G
- Internet Use:
Up to additional 6 hours on 3G
Up to additional 6 hours on LTE
Up to additional 7 hours on WiFi
- Audio Playback: Up to 30 hours
- Video Playback: Up to 7 hours
Mophie's iPhone 5 Juice Pack Helium: Double Battery Life for Not Much More Heft
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Beats the battery life out of the Nexus 4! Please make one for the N4, I can hardly make it through half a day. I could make the iPhone 5 last 2 days but even with GPS off, BT off, Screen brightness very low and minimal usage it still manages to be in the 15% mark before 5PM.
I have a feeling Chris had the same issue and it was fixed by flashing CM10.1
I’m hoping Chris is busy writing an article on the pros & cons and how to do this (as I need step-by-step instructions).
The phone actually loses battery whilst on and plugged in to a charger. I’m hoping this can be fixed by a software update. The charger that came with it seems to be the only thing that can give it a good charge, and still that charges slowly (3 hours to 100%).
I have now gone further with my battery saving efforts and turned Google Now off and got a static wallpaper, and also only allow 2 apps to run in the background. seems to be working but still I didn’t get this 4 core monster to babysit it’s battery all the time.
What power output does the supplied charger have as opposed to the charger where it’s losing power?
The one that came with it i believe is 1.2 (Amp??) and the one that loses the power is an iPad (2) charger and that’s 2A I think, but it loses power while plugged into a PC/Laptop/Car USB port.
The phone is great but the battery is crap, makes me think about my next phone very carefully, iPhone’s from my experience have good battery and can last up to 2 full days if I let it.
That sounds about right.
Install this and just note down the values when the phone is charging, and I’d expect them to be as follows:
Original: 999mA
iPad: 500mA (it thinks it’s USB)
PC/Laptop/Car: 500mA (it IS USB!)
However, if with the screen off, your phone is unable to charge from a 500mA charger, then you definitely have a rogue process, data connection or something sucking down the battery.
What do the phone’s battery stats say is draining it?
Thanks, will try tonight.
The iPad charger does charge it whilst the phone is on standby but probably 1% per 10-15 Min, and if I start to use the phone the battery goes down like it would if it wasn’t plugged in.
Screen – 19%
Phone idle – 17%
Mobile standby – 15%
Android OS – 10%
Wifi – 6%
Advanced Task Manager – 6%
etc.
Mobile network signal – yellow for a while, slight red, yellow then a few gray gaps with green in between, not too sure what that means.
Advanced Task Manager?! Kill it! Kill it with fire!!
This will be using enough battery on its own – Android hasn’t needed this sort of software since Eclair, over 3 years ago!
The Mobile Network Signal display indicates that your phone is expending quite a bit of power struggling to hold on to the not so great signal wherever you are.
contact Customer Services (Google) and they’ll probably send you a replacement as they’ve just done that for me as my battery went screwy (including losing power whilst allegedly charging).
Is your replacement better? There is alot of forums online about the crap charging/battery.
so far….but it took about 5-7 weeks for my first one to start ‘acting up’ so to speak….still waiting for a step-by-step guide about rooting / flashing my Nexus 4 from a writer here
I have managed to root mine, with a step by step article from giffgaff forums of all company’s, took around 20 min but could do it again in 10 min.
I can now hide the bottom bar whilst playing games and it is much better, also can use the PS3 pad with games
Dead Trigger is awesome with it.
DO you have a link or could you explain what this means “giffgaff forums of all company’s” as I really want to do this but I’m not very technical.
Or phone manufacturers could stop with the thinness / weight obsession and just build phones with bigger better batteries!