Impressive iPhone Portable Backup Battery for Cheap!

We’ve all at one time or another experienced it: we need to make an important (or not) phone call and find out that our iPhone is dead in the water as far as battery energy is concerned. Life sucks doesn’t it? Maybe only now you’ll have finally regretted spending so much time earlier watching those Youtube videos and playing those video games! But fear not. You’ve read Anotherwindowsblog and prepared yourself just for these situations! In this article, I’ll go over an awesome way to prevent yourself from stumbling into that situation by using a portable iPhone battery backup that will resurrect your dead iPhone right back to life!

BAD NEWS!!
Shortly after purchase of this battery backup from Monoprice, they have decided to suspend selling the product from their stores! They are no longer available as of this moment. I had a quick chat with a customer representative and this is what he had to say:

CS – Joseph B (Level 1): We have decided to suspend offering these products as part of our business plan. We will let you know if and when we resume selling these products.

CS – Joseph B (Level 1): Truly sorry for any inconvenience it may cause you.

Call me old school but in my opinion, a phone’s main purpose is to, well, make sure that you’re able to make and receive phone calls! I love smart phones and with the invention of the iPhone’s, the smart phone market has literally blown up. But you don’t need a history lesson of the iPhone to know that. We are allowed to do so many things on these smart phones that it pretty much blurs the line between a phone and a computer. However, as with all things electronics, it still unfortunately needs battery juice to run on! With so many tasks being accomplished on our phones, it can run out of battery way sooner than expected. This isn’t a problem if you are at home or in a location where you can simply charge the phone right back up but what if you’re not? What if you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere and God forbid in a place with no electrical outlets? For these situations, we need a backup battery to save the day. Make no mistake about it. There are definitely a lot of products in this category that promises to help bring your dead iPhone back from the grave and beyond when needed. Some are asking how is this possible since the iPhone doesn’t have a removable battery? Well, you’ll see soon enough.

Monoprice to the Rescue Once Again

Like I said above, there are many different manufacturers and models to choose from for your iPhone backup battery needs. However, one company that stands out to provide us, the customers and users, with the cheapest prices possible for our technical needs is from none other than Monoprice. I’m not sure how they allow for such low prices for their goods but bless them for doing it! If you’re the type of person who spends a lot of money in your local electronics store for cables, HDTV mounts, adapters and other accessories, you have no idea how much money you can be saving by purchasing them from Monoprice instead. Anyways, Monoprice has their own line of iPhone backup battery pack and guess what? It can be yours for dirt cheap. I mean dirt cheap.

You can purchase Monoprice’s iPhone/iPod Backup Battery Pack here. (There are other colors besides black)

That’s right, for around just $11, you can have a peace of mind that no matter where you travel to, you’ll have a spare battery for your iPhone in case you run out. No, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. $10. Not $30, $40, or even $50.
I live in Hawaii and that means always having a fear when shopping online as we can go bankrupt on shipping prices alone. Monoprice however, didn’t do that to us. The battery, plus shipping, came out to $10.94. Obviously, your rates may vary. Good news is that Monoprice also ships to various other countries around the world so fear not about missing out on this incredible deal. The product arrived in my mailbox very, very fast.

Here is a picture of the product in the box. And no, it doesn’t come in those hard to open, tightly sealed, “where the hell are my 6″ scissor shears” type of plastic cases!

Backup Battery

The instructions themselves are printed on the back cover. Here is a picture of the backup battery next to my iPhone 3G. It’s pretty much half the size of the iPhone with the same width and length. This allows you to easily dump this backup in your laptop bag, backpack, purse, or even in your pocket with ease.

Battery Size

Charging the device is simple. You use the same charging/data cable for your iPhone to charge up this backup battery as well. It was very generous of Monoprice to ship the battery already fully charged! You can either charge it through your computer or via the wall adapter. There are four blue “capacity” lights indicating the current battery level of the backup battery. As you use it to charge your iPhone, the lights will obviously disappear one by one. In the upper right corner is also a little button you can press that will immediately show you the current battery charge. This quickly gives you an idea of how much juice is left in it. Towards the bottom, there is a “full” light that will light up blue once the battery is charged to the maximum capacity. No, I know what you’re thinking. Just because all four capacity lights are blue doesn’t mean it’s at 100% full capacity! Also, the battery does seem to lose a little of it’s charge if left alone so take note of that as well but it shouldn’t make a big difference. Also to note is that you cannot charge the backup battery and the iPhone at the same time like how other more expensive backup batteries can. This is a slight drawback but come on, for this price, I’m sure you can live with that.

Battery Charging

So, once you have a dead (or near dead) iPhone, it’s time to use our backup battery. You ready for this? Alright so to use it, you simply plug the battery to the iPhone! OK, so you’ve probably already figured that part out. Immediately, your iPhone will begin charging! You can still use your iPhone as it charges so no problems there. It behaves exactly as if you’re charging the phone via your computer or wall charger. However, it does feel weird to make phone calls with the battery attached to it as the battery connection to the iPhone isn’t a tight fit. It sort of wiggles a little so be careful. However, don’t let that prevent you from using it if you need to make a important call right away!

During one simple test, I drained my iPhone till about 20% (when it gives you a warning of low battery). I plugged in a fully charged backup battery from Monoprice and let it do its thing. About an hour and 30 minutes later, my iPhone was fully charged. That may seem a little long but remember, you are allowed to use your iPhone “while” it is charging. Also, after the iPhone was fully charged, the backup battery still had 2 capacity lights on. Therefore, I’m to believe that the battery could technically charge a completely dead iPhone back to full capacity.

Battery Connected

In the End…

If you purchase this backup battery, I swear it will be the best investment you’ll make for your iPhone! If you travel or work outside of your office a lot, you’ll definitely want a backup battery for your phone. Simply charge it, leave it in your bag or car and you wouldn’t have to worry about a thing. I mean come on, you can choose to purchase other expensive backup batteries that does the same or you can stick with Monoprice. These backup batteries makes great gifts to anyone you know of that always seems to borrow your (or any other person for that matter) phone because theirs is dead.

Rating: 4.5/5 (2 votes cast)

Impressive iPhone Portable Backup Battery for Cheap!, 4.5 out of 5 based on 2 ratings