Gamertell

Product: Mophie Juice Pack (aka Mophie)
Price: $99.95
Pros: Great feel, good weight, doubles playable time and convenient charge feedback LEDs.
Cons: Deactivates the iPod Touch’s built-in speaker and inconsistent USB connectivity.
Overall: A great concept that, if it worked consistently, would likely be well worth the price. Instead, it’s an overprice albeit comfy external battery.
Rating: One thumb sideways, one thumb down; 68/100; D+; * 1/2 out of five.

Considering the battery-sucking potential of the iPod Touch with its bright screen, built-in speaker and energy consumed which moving and touching it, an external battery pack is certainly useful. Especially if you plan to play a lot of games on the go.

The Mophie Juice Pack - a fancy name for a rechargeable battery device - tries to offer not only doubled battery life but also a convenient mini-USB connection port. The battery portion works wonderfully. Unfortunately, it’s the second part of the device that gave me issues.

Out of Box

The Mophie is pretty self-contained, shipping with a tiny user manual that has more warnings that actual instructions and a short mini-USB cable. The device measures 4 7/8 tall, 2 1/8 in. wide and approximately 5/8 in thick and weighs 2.8 oz (80g) by itself and or 6.8 oz (190g) with the iPod Touch docked.

The Mophie has a matte black rubber exterior with a bright green interior that is covered by the iPod Touch. An iPod Touch fits snugly into the Mophie and connects via both a standard iPod connector port and audio port.

The bottom of the Mophie has two ports, one a female mini-USB to connect to a PC for charging and data transfer and a standard 1/8 in. female audio port for ear buds or your favorite headphones.

In My Hands

The Mophie’s grip is very nice, helping keep the otherwise slippery system in hand and easier to play. Since the bulk of he device is on the bottom edge of the iPod, when holding it vertically, switching to a horizontal view is a little less natural or comfortable and makes the weight obviously lopsided.

If you keep your iPod in any type of sleeve, you’ll need to remove it to use the Mophie, which is a tiny sacrifice if you really want to take advantage of the extra battery.

As promised, the Mophie does at least double your power in terms of the length of time you can play your iPod Touch. However, inserting the iPod into the Mophie occupies the audio port which means that it deactivates the ‘s convenient yet battery-sucking external speaker, essentially forcing you to use the more power-friendly audio port if you want to hear anything. That pretty much negates the benefit of having a second generation iPod Touch. The audio port is moved to the Mophie’s bottom port so that if you want to hear anything you’ll need to continue to carry ear buds.

The back of the Mophie includes four tiny LEDs which glow and (or blink) while the unit is charging via the included mini-USB cable. When the devices is unplugged, you can press a flat button on the back to see how full the charge is (four lights is full, none is empty). A very useful feature, indeed.

The most convenient of the promised features is the pass-through USB connection. This is supposed to allow you to dock the iPod Touch in the Mophie and then use a standard USB cable to connect the docked iPod to your computer (for transferring data, accessing iTunes, etc.) At first, this worked just fine. After less than a dozen uses, however, the connection proved inconsistent, taking either several minutes to connect or not being able to keep a stable connection to the PC for longer than 30 seconds. That’s very frustrating when trying to sync a lot of data with iTunes (I was running in XP Pro, iTunes 8). It also means you’ll hear that puh-ing sound ad nausea as it connects, disconnects and attempts to reconnect to your computer and iTunes.

Out of Pocket

The Mophie Juice Pack is certainly an impressive looking and comfortable rechargeable battery holster that well extends the playable life of a second generation iPod Touch.

My main contention is the price considering the questionable performance of the mini-USB connectivity. Being able to use a standard min-USB cable to charge and connect an iPod Touch is a far more convenient that finding the right iPod connector that works with the second gen iPod Touch. The unstable connectivity, however, renders that feature completely useless, making the Mophie little more than a fancy external battery.

When they do get the technical issues worked out, this will prove to be a truly good bit o’ gear to own. Until then, however, save your money and skip the Mophie.

Site [Mophie Juice Pack]