Taking the plunge with an iPhone battery case

This month, after holding out for a while for fear of a bulky phone and a state of indecision, I finally decided to give an iPhone charger case a go.

After um-ing and ah-ing for a while about what style of case I should try first I decided to go for the Dexim XPowerSkin case which encapsulates the entire phone and has a button on the back just to turn on charging functions.

I thought this month would be a great one to trial it seeing as I was doing a 336km ride that’d require me having enough battery to track my ride, get map directions and listen to some audiobooks. Quite a trial by fire!

An early win

Before I took the case on my big ride it certainly earned its keep by protecting my phone in the first few days when it flew out of my jersey pocket as I came out of the saddle riding at 40km/h. I heard the explosive sound of it hitting the pavement as bits flew everywhere but when I picked it all up the phone was fine as the case had taken the brunt of the impact.

The big ride

So, how did the charging case fare over 336km and 11 hours of high use? It performed admirably, but the task was too great.

The case made it to about the 250km mark before my battery dropped below 9 percent and I had to plug in another USB portable charger, very admirable considering the usage. This is hardly surprising as the case is only designed to give it one full charge (doubling the battery life of the phone). What this tells me is that if I want to have a single charger case last that kind of distance then I’ll need one that is probably more than 2000mAh.

Everyday usage

My initial impressions were a little shakey because I had trouble putting the phone in as I felt that I would break the plastic when trying to snap the two pieces together. This anxiety turned out to be a folly as I’ve put the case on and taken it back off a few times now without any trouble. The case does attach pretty solidly so its intended use seems to be a more permanent solution.

As expected any charger case is going to be bulky to carry in a pocket but it does help to always have the extra juice with me considering the pretty poor battery life I get with my high iPhone usage.

Final thoughts

For the moment I will keep using the case as I think I get good value out of it. I’ll watch this charging case space more closely now and look to try another case that is either less bulky or one that has more than one full charge in it.

All-in-all it has been a good experience for dipping my toes into the world of charging cases.