| Specs at a glance: Mophie Space Pack | |
|---|---|
| Storage | 16 or 32GB integrated NAND |
| Ports | MicroUSB 2.0 for charging |
| Size | 5.66' 2.57' x 0.63' (143.76 x 65.28 x 16mm) |
| Weight | 2.80 oz (79.38g) |
| Battery | 1700mAh |
| Warranty | 1 year |
| Starting Price | $149.95 for 16GB, $179.95 for 32GB |
| Compatibility | iPhone 5 and 5S only. Not compatible with fifth-gen iPod touch or iPhone 5C. |
The Space app does have its own built-in camera function that captures photos directly to the Space Pack, and there's a built-in media player as well for playing videos and audio stored on it. We spent some time with the new Mophie Space app, which is the heart of the new case. To access your extra Mophie storage, you have to use this app. With a clean iOS 7 design, it adds a full file. On the surface, the Space Pack looks like any other Mophie battery case. But on the inside are additional smarts and storage to keep up to 32GB of media. This is facilitated by a special app from Mophie called Space. Take a look at the video below to get a better idea of how Space works.
- Storage on the Mophie is managed through a free downloadable Space app. Content inside the app is compartmentalized under icons for Photos, Videos, Music, Documents, and 'Other Files.'
- Mophie is all spaced out with new Space Packs, Spacestations and a revamped Space 2.0 app Accompanying the launch of its Space 2.0 app, Mophie has a new line of compatible space products, including.
I bought one of Mophie's external battery packs not long after we reviewed one in mid-2012, and since then it's become one of my favorite travel companions. My phone is in near-constant use while I'm traveling for work, whether I'm transmitting communications to the Ars Orbiting HQ, tethering my computer to my phone, or shooting some quick on-the-fly video or pictures without digging out my DSLR.
The upside to an external battery pack is that I can plug pretty much anything into it, from an iPhone to an Android tablet to a Chromebook 11. The bad thing is that you have to remember to have it on you, and you also need to carry around the necessary cables at all times. That's where Mophie's Space Pack comes in—it's a revised version of the company's Juice Pack battery cases, with a twist. In addition to a 1,700mAh battery, it includes either 16GB or 32GB of storage that you can use to augment your iPhone's internal storage. It's not for everyone, but for some iPhone 5 and 5S users among you, it just might be able to kill three birds with one stone.
The case
Mophie Space App Ipa
The case itself is very similar to Mophie's existing Juice Pack Plus or Juice Pack Air, the largest and second-largest battery cases the company sells. Its 1,700mAh battery is identical to the Air, and they share roughly equal physical dimensions and weight (the Space Pack is very slightly larger and heavier, but it's hard to tell the difference). It comes apart in two pieces that slide onto the phone and interlock. The bottom of the case has a male Lightning connector that goes into the phone, but you charge the case itself with the same micro USB port that you might find in an Android or Windows phone or tablet.The back of our case is black soft-touch plastic that feels pleasant enough but picks up scuffs fairly easily. The texture is similar to the black-backed Nexus 5 and Nexus 7, or perhaps the Moto G, and it's a little rubbery and grippy without being too sticky. The back of the phone is broken only by the cutout for the camera and LED flash, the small switch on the bottom that turns charging on and off, and the silver button you can press to check out the battery indicator.
If you usually carry your iPhone without a case, the hardest thing to get used to will be the Space Pack's extra bulk. At 5.66' by 2.57' by 0.63', it more than doubles the phone's thickness and adds nearly an inch to its height. Even the fairly substantial OtterBox cases I normally use don't drastically change the iPhone's form factor, but the Space Pack does. It took me some time to get used to the asymmetrical 'chin' of the case, which adds maybe two-thirds of an inch between the bottom of the phone and the Home button. This 'chin' also makes it more difficult to plug headphones in—Mophie includes a small extender that works great, but it's small and easy to lose. Finally, small speaker grilles on the front redirect sound from the bottom of the phone. It changes the quality of the sound just a little but doesn't muffle or amplify it to any great degree.
AdvertisementThat's all pretty easy to get used to though. The bigger annoyance is the case's buttons, which are overly mushy and indistinct. It's hard to even tell when you've pressed the power button, and often pushing one of the volume buttons would push the side of the case down on both of them, failing to change the volume in either direction.
These problems aside, add a good screen protector, and the case is going to do what it was designed to do: protect your iPhone if it makes a trip to the ground. There's always a chance that a nasty fall would damage the battery case itself, but that's the risk you run by buying a case that's more than just a case.
Mophie Space Pack Instructions
The battery
A small switch at the bottom of the case turns the Space Pack's charging function on and off—the extra bulk the case adds to your phone is more than worth it if battery life is your biggest problem. The numbers speak for themselves.
With the Space Pack added in, the iPhone 5 more than doubled its runtime under our Web browsing battery life test. Just remember that the case has an on/off switch for a reason—it's best if you let the phone's internal battery discharge most of the way and then use the case to charge it back up. Leave it on all the time, and you'll be discharging the case even if the phone itself is 100 percent charged.
The storage
And finally we get to the part of the Space Pack that's really new and unique—the 16 or 32GB of extra storage it adds to your SD card-free iPhone. Apple's restrictions mean that dealing with the Space Pack's internal storage will never be as seamless as using the iPhone's internal storage, but Mophie's system is probably as close as we'll get.
You interact with the Space Pack's storage with a Space app, downloaded separately from the App Store (we explore it thoroughly in the gallery above). You can store anything on the Space Pack, but the five main organizational categories are 'photos,' 'videos,' 'music,' 'documents,' and 'other files.'
These categories are organized by file type rather than folder. The app briefly scans the case's internal storage and automatically stores certain types of files in the correct categories—JPGs and PNGs would be photos, .docx and PDF files are documents, MP3s and M4As are music, and so on. Unrecognized files are dumped into the 'other files' folder. If you prefer a carefully tended file tree rather than this automatic sorting, the 'All files' button will let you browse the disk as you would in a regular file explorer.
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There's no fancy app to help you get files on the Space Pack in the first place. Any computer you plug it into will see it as a 16GB or 32GB FAT32 formatted external disk, and you copy files to it the same way you would with any other USB drive. The FAT32 format means it should work equally well with Windows, OS X, and various Linux distributions. iPods could be used as USB drives back in the day, but that feature never made its way to the iPhone—the Space Pack gives you a way to restore that feature.
Saving content directly to the Space app from within iOS is possible, but only in very specific circumstances. Space shows up as a share target from within the Mail app, for instance, and the app can (automatically or manually) pull photos from your phone's camera roll. You can take pictures directly through the app too, but Mophie's camera sub-app is barebones even compared to Apple's camera app.
That's an apt description for the entire Space app, actually—if it has one major shortcoming, it's that the 'apps' within the app that actually interact with the files are pretty barebones. You get a handful of sorting options for music files, but for everything else you can only mark files as 'favorites' and sort them that way. The Music sub-app can sort by album, but it doesn't seem to respect the ordering of tracks on that album (this may or may not be a thing the kids worry about these days). There's no denying that the extra storage space is tremendously useful, but by the time you've actually got 32GB of files on the thing, it's going to become a little difficult to navigate.
The files stored on the Space Pack are also mostly sequestered from those on the phone itself. iOS' system-wide Spotlight search doesn't see files on the Space Pack, so you'll have to use the app's built-in search function. If you've got some music on the phone and some on the Space Pack, you'll need to use separate applications to access the songs based on what you want to listen to. If you're already familiar with the restrictions Apple puts on cloud storage apps like Dropbox or Google Drive, you'll know pretty much everything you need to know about the way Mophie's app works.
Wrapping up
The Mophie Space Pack does three things, but it doesn't do them equally well. As an extra battery, it is beyond reproach. As a protective case, it's good but not great—the buttons could be much better, it's pretty bulky, and there's always the chance that you'll ruin the case itself if you drop it the wrong way. As an external storage accessory, it's as good as iOS' restrictions will let it be, and it's probably your best option if you're constantly running out of space for pictures, videos, or music on your phone.
This is an accessory that will appeal mostly to Apple diehards who use their phones all the time and want to carry as much of their stuff with them as possible. There are better cases out there if protecting your phone is Job One, and Mophie's stand-alone batteries are better if you've got something to charge that isn't an iPhone 5 or 5S.
The good
- More than doubles battery life, while offering extra protection
- One of the few ways to increase an iPhone's local storage
- Can be used as a USB flash drive
- Curved, soft-touch plastic feels good to hold
- More compact than carrying around an extra external battery pack
The bad
- Bulkier than most iPhone cases
- iPhone 5 and 5S only
- iOS' restrictions limit how you can interact with the case's storage
- Recessed headphone jack makes it hard to plug in headphones without the small, easy-to-lose accessory
- More expensive than most cases and/or external batteries
Mophie User Manual
The ugly
- Volume and power buttons are squishy and sometimes unresponsive