Mini-review: A week with Apple’s lumpy new iPhone battery case

I was on vacation last week when Apple’s new first-party Smart Battery Case arrived on my doorstep, which was actually kind of nice—freed from the pressures of having to write something about it as soon as humanly possible, I could just use it for a few days and worry about writing everything down at a later date.

The ease with which you can “just use” the battery case is probably the best thing about it; you slide your phone into it and go about your business. But it’s not for everyone, and when I send it back to Apple I probably won’t end up buying one of my own.

Basic facts

This is the first battery case that Apple itself has made for any of its iPhones. It’s compatible with the iPhone 6 and 6S, but not with any larger or smaller iDevices (I plugged in a sixth-generation iPod Touch just to see what it did, and iOS recognized the case properly for a moment before telling me the accessory wasn’t supported). No version for the 6 Plus or 6S Plus exists, which is probably fine since those models already have better battery life than their smaller counterparts.

Insert and remove the phone by bending back the top part of the case and then sliding the phone in and out. Like most battery cases, this one adds a larger “chin” at the bottom of the device. Apple has added front-facing holes here for the speaker and the microphone, and there’s a Lightning port and a cutout for the headphone jack on the bottom. You can plug in Apple’s earpods and any similarly sized headphones without any kind of extender or adapter, but if your headphones have a larger plug at the end you’ll need to remove the case to use them.

The case’s 1877mAh battery doesn’t quite double Apple’s iPhone 6S battery life figures, but it comes close—Apple advertises 18 hours of LTE Internet use (up from 10) and 25 hours of talk time (up from 14). You can either slide a discharged iPhone into the case to charge it up or just keep the iPhone in the case at all times and let the case’s battery drain first.

Put it on and forget about it

Apple’s battery case has no switches, and you can only see its lone indicator light when you’ve plugged the case in without a phone—there’s a small orange LED that turns green when the case is charged, like on a MagSafe charger.

Some early reviews have criticized the case for lacking an on/off switch and an indicator LED, easy ways to control whether the case is charging your phone and how much battery life you have left. All of these are common in cases by Mophie, Anker, and others. But just because those features are familiar doesn’t make them good—they only exist because iOS doesn’t have any sort of in-OS reporting for external battery levels and because the batteries aren’t smart enough to stop or slow their power output when the phone is charged.

As a first-party accessory, Apple’s battery pack can skip that stuff. Battery levels are reported directly in iOS, both on the lock screen (when plugged in) and in the handy Batteries widget in the Notification Center. My one complaint is that iOS’ standard battery indicator in the upper-right corner becomes useless when the case is plugged in; it only reports the state of the phone’s internal battery. Since the case’s battery discharges first, the indicator just sits at 100 percent until the case’s battery runs out.

That aside, the benefit of the battery case is that you just put it on and then use your iPhone as you normally would. I understand that some people prefer the increased sense of control given by switches and lights, but these days all I want is not to think about my phone’s battery level, ever, no matter what I’m doing. Provided you still charge nightly, that’s what Apple’s case provides. I’m a heavy personal hotspot user, among other things, which means I’m usually plugging in for half an hour or so in the evening so I can make it to bedtime. With the case on, my 6S’ internal battery had usually only discharged to 70 or 80 percent at the end of a 16-hour day.

In fact, rather than see Apple put more switches and lights on its case, I’d like the company to open up iOS a bit so that third-party battery case makers can make designs that work the same way Apple’s does. That means battery charge levels that are reported in the OS and a steady straightforward discharging process rather than fiddling with switches.

But it looks and feels weird

I like the way the case works, but it’s the look and feel of the thing that will keep me from grabbing one of my own (and, as a secondary concern, the $99 price tag is around twice what you’ll pay for basic third-party cases).

It starts with the much-derided hump on the back, a design touch that makes it look like Apple just took one of its silicone cases and stuffed a battery underneath it. It’s definitely not Apple’s first design miss when it comes to cases for its products, either—the one for the iPhone 5C with the Croc-like holes on the back comes to mind. More symmetrical cases might look a bit bulkier, but it’s hard to argue that this odd lump is the solution to that problem. That said, as others have pointed out, using a lump in the middle instead of one big battery doesn't block the antenna cutouts in any way, so the case won't interfere with your wireless reception.

Second, I’m not a fan of the material Apple is using here, which is an even softer and grippier version of the stuff it uses for its silicone cases. It keeps the phone in your hand, but hair and dust sticks to it like crazy, something that gets especially bad if you’ve got the white case. It also creates some unpleasant resistance when you’re trying to pocket or unpocket your phone. Again, from a purely functional standpoint, the case seems fine. It’s not easy to drop, and, if you do drop it, it feels like it would provide a good amount of protection.

The “chin” on the bottom of the phone also makes a tallish phone even taller—the Home button and the bezel across the top and bottom of the screen are already larger than what you’ll find in most Android phones, so if you have to lean on the Reachability feature to reach everything on your iPhone’s screen, the battery case isn’t going to help anything.

The best thing about the Smart Battery Case (aside from the extended battery life, which is always appreciated) is its integration within iOS. Adjusting iOS’ native battery indicator to give you some idea of the combined charge level of the case and internal battery would be great, but even so it’s nice to be able to see this information from within the OS rather than relying on colored LEDs. We’d like to see Apple extend that capability to third-party case makers. Until they do, OS integration and simplicity are the biggest points in this case’s favor.

The good

• iOS integration so you can actually see the battery case’s level from within the OS.
• Simple. No buttons or switchers or indicator lights.
• Shouldn't interfere with cellular reception.

The bad

• Too-grippy texture picks up dust, hair, and other grit and makes it hard to pocket the phone.
• More costly than third-party cases of comparable or greater capacities.
• Only compatible with iPhone 6 and 6S.
• The way iOS reports the battery percentage could stand to be tweaked.

The ugly

• The case is literally ugly.