Reviews for mophie Juice Pack Powerstation External Battery

This is an excellent backup power supply which I'm sure you will enjoy. Its outside appearance is obviously derived from the iPhone 4 and this is a positive quality. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, after all.

Sizewise, it is 1.5 times as thick, 1/2 inch shorter, and exactly as wide as the iPhone 4. It's just about the same weight as #4, but perhaps 15 grams lighter. The black surface is rubberized and provides an ideal platform on which to rest #4 while it's charging. There is a single button on the side which when pressed indicates its current status via 4 lights. Of course less illuminated lights means less charge is left. When charging, these same 4 lights blink incrementally until 100% charge is reached, at which point all lights remain steady.

This is one of several Mophie power source products and this model is the universalized version in that it utilizes the ubiquitous USB interface. While it does not tie itself exclusively to the Apple proprietary interface, the manual explicitly states it was primarily designed for Apple products. No guarantee is offered for other mobile products. (One must wonder why they even bothered univeralizing it if they weren't going to test compatibility with other devices.) For this reason, the user is required to provide his own interface cable which must be USB on the mating end. So if you choose to acquire this premium product, you must consider the additional cost of an extra Apple docking cable, should you require one.

To charge a device using this product, you connect it via your supplied USB cable, and push the only button available on its side to turn it on. Simple!

To charge the device itself, you connect to it the supplied micro-USB cable which has a standard USB interface on the other end. From here you are free to connect it to any charging source which offers USB output.


I purchased this product for the purpose of:

1) Reducing battery wear on my #4 when using power hungry GPS navigation software.

2) Ensuring I have a backup power source if I get lost in the woods during one of my nature treks.

I give it 4 stars for these reasons:

1) It gets confused if attempting to charge the device immediately after using it to charge another device. If you try to do this, the charge lights will blink for about 3 seconds before all 4 of them go steady. This will give you the false impression that the device is fully charged, but I assure you it is not. You must wait for an undetermined time period (perhaps 30 minutes?) before it will correctly start charging. I read about this same flaw elsewhere, but decided to see for myself it if was true. Indeed it was.

2) I do not like that there are 2 separate interfaces: USB to charge devices and micro-USB to charge the device itself. This means I need to keep track of one extra wire with my arsenal of electronic gadgets. It would have been better to integrate the device's charge interface with the device itself. Perhaps a retractable USB cable?

All in all, this is a well designed product I think most people will find acceptable by non-Apple standards.

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