It’s been on back order forever, but my FastMac iV finally showed up last week at the office. Of course that’s the week I was running all over the place so I had to wait until this week to pick it up. But now it’s here and I’m quite happy with it.
I’d originally pre-ordered the model for the 1G iPhone, but since I upgraded, I had to change the order and wait for them to ramp up the manufacturing for the latest model.
What is it?
It’s a heavy duty external battery that doubles as a case. The internal battery on the iPhone is about 1000mW so with the pack you have four times the autonomy of the iPhone by itself.
It’s a slide in design, similar to the Mophie Juice Pack in that there’s a pass through iPod connector so you don’t have to pull it out of the case to charge it or sync. Very convenient. The bottom part looks a little odd because it’s designed to fit into the docking station directly as well.
How much power?
Here’s where the iV stands out - at 3100mW it’s a substantially bigger battery than the Mophie or the new Richard Solo at 1800mW. Quoted capacity brings it up to 24 hours of talk time - 24 hours on the phone without stopping. Pretty crazy stuff. However, we all know that nobody uses their iPhone to call people - it’s all about burning up the 3G radio waves and that sucks the juice down like nothing else.
In my informal first day test, I left the iPhone plugged in overnight docked in the iV and unplugged it with the alarm at 6:30 and went out for the day. I had an intense usage day (partly because I had the new battery), with the wifi and Push Mail activated, and stressing the wifi while testing out the newly acquired AirSharing while copying over about 2Gb of data in all sorts of formats to see how it performed. A few YouTube videos, some Fring VOIP communications, the usual compulsive NetNewsWire updates, a couple of chapters of Topper in Stanza, etc.
I also decided to really push my luck and disabled the autolock feature and kept the iPhone awake all day at 75% brightness.
The iV finally stopped feeding power to the iPhone around 6PM. And the iPhone internal battery is still fully charged and ready to keep going.
I’m going to try it out on a more normal cycle the rest of the week, but I think that I can safely say that this will satisfy the power needs of the hardiest road warriors.
Extras
There are a couple of additional nifty features that I quite appreciate. There’s a built-in LED on the back that you can use as a flashlight - or better yet, for lighting up stuff so that you can take a picture when the conditions are less than perfect. It’s not tied to the software in the iPhone, you need to toggle a manual switch on the side to turn it on and off.
There’s also a standard USB port on the back. Not for charging the iV - you need to use the iPod connector, but for charging other accessories off of the battery, like your bluetooth headset
The catch
Well - nothing comes for free and more battery life means a bigger battery. This is not a slim, elegant case. If you bought your iPhone for the style, this is not the battery for you. If you like to keep your iPhone in your jeans pocket - that’s probably not going to work either.
That said, it’s not quite outside the realms of the reasonable, and for some odd reason it reminds me of my old Motorola MicroTAC in terms of weight and in hand feel (which is quite nice) with a soft rubberized surface that is much less slippery than the iPhone itself. It still fits in my suit jacket pockets, but does add a bit of sag on the lighter weight ones.
I suppose you could also glue one of those universal belt clips to the back, but then it wouldn’t lie flat.
How much?
Currently offered at $99 for the 3G and $79 for the first generation iPhone, it represents the maximum autonomy available for those willing to live with the size.
Buy it again?
The other option is to carry around a few Novodio or Richard Solo type batteries and charge up as the battery gets low. But one thing I like about the really powerful case approach is that once the internal battery is charged up, the iPhone starts drawing power from the dock connection, thus minimizing the number of charge cycles imposed on the internal battery which should extend its useful life. Using my old Novodio approach I was going through multiple charges in a day, which is less than ideal
So would I buy it again? Yes. it fits my needs pretty well, and will be an absolute requirement if Apple finally offers some kind of tethering application…