One of the most popular complaints about smartphones is that they run out of battery too fast, and the iPhone is no exception. There are various ways to address this problem, but if all else fails you could buy a case with a built-in battery, like the helium.
The battery means the case is larger and heavier than standard iPhone cases – it made our phone 68g heavier, weighing in at 181g, compared to its usual 113g – but it’s actually less bulky than many similar products.
We ran down our battery to zero percent, then charged it from a fully charged helium. We started the charge at 12pm and by 13.41 it was at 64 percent, with no juice to go any further. Mophie claims the battery can give the iPhone 5 an additional 6 to 7 hours of life (depending on whether you use 3g or Wi-fi). added to the iPhone 5’s built-in battery you’re looking at 14 to 17 hours of total usage.
We can see the helium coming in useful on a long-haul flight: if you were thinking of using your iPhone to watch video en route to the Us, it should give you an extra 7 hours of video playback, according to Mophie.
Our experience, in fact, was even better: in normal use (maps, photos, email, youtube, iPlayer, facebook), we found that we were down to 9 percent by 23.12, almost 12 hours after we started charging. You can see how much power is in the helium at any time by tapping the button to the left of the lights. beware: one light means it’s almost empty.
