Over the past two  years I have had a love hate relationship with the Mophie Juice Pack. It has been awhile since my last update, but I wanted to let you know my recent experience has been. When I owned a iPhone 3g I went through three of their external battery cases and reported here about the mortality rate of those cases when dropped while being charged. Essentially anytime the charge cable got banged while plugged into the case the internal plug would break.

In recent moths I upgraded to a iPhone 4, and went and purchased their latest rechargeable battery case after having been given assurances at CES 2011 that the new cases had been redesigned and the weakness in the connector had been resolved… Well not so fast. On my latest trip I had my phone plugged in charging, on the bedstand next to me and I accidentally knocked the phone off the bed stand and you guessed it the connector broke in the same exact way previous versions have.

Honestly I just shook my head… The connector in the Juice Pack Plus was rattling around like the others had. It just really blows me away that a device cannot be made to withstand an 18 inch fall of a bed stand onto a carpeted floor. But I disregard my own advice and had it in a place where it could slide of the bed stand.

Some will say Todd your pretty stupid in keep on buying these things. This may be true but no other external battery gives me more extra battery life that is as easy to use. So I will give everyone warning again. Only charge you phone in which you are using a Mophie Juice Pack in a location that will in no way be at risk of falling of a table or counter.

Tirade #1
Lost Confidence
2011 CES Coverage

Mophie was displaying their latest chargers for the iPhone4 at CES 2011. Many of you may recall the trouble I had with the 3G version of Mophie charger where the charging connection was not as robust as it should be. In the iPhone4 design they have reworked the design and location of the charging connection. Talking with the representative that was at CES, I was pleased to find out that they also re-enforced the area in and around the charging plug that gave so many of us issues in the past.

Overall the new design is sleeker and fits the new iPhone4 in a way that really makes you see that they spent a lot of time on designing the latest charger.

Mophie has also expanded into a line of accessories for the iPad which are sleek and stylish. You can find more details about Mophie at Mophie.com

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Over the past 6 months I have been an proponent of the Mophie Juice Pack Air. For those that do not know, your iPhone slides into the Juice pack and when you are getting low on power you throw the switch on the bottom of the Juice Pack Air and your phone starts charging.

They are not cheap they run about $80.00 dollars. All was well up to last week when my Juice Pack Air that is less than 6 months old stopped taking a charge. It was good in the morning bad in the evening. I had not dropped the phone or had anything similar happen to it.

I use the Juice Pack Air on a daily basis as I am always killing the battery to my phone after 8-10 hours our usage. I was in Best Buy this weekend and grabbed a new charger and for a couple of days it worked as advertised.

Yesterday I started getting error messages on my iPhone that the device attached to it, which was the Mophie Juice Pack Air was not compatible and the phone refused to take a charge from the new Juice Pack Air.

My plan is to take the new unit back to Best Buy and exchange it. But honestly I have lost confidence in the brand. Doing a Google search I can tell that I am not alone and a lot of people are having the same issues I am.

The folks at Apple need to take a closer look at this companies quality control. In the mean time I am telling all my geeky friends, buyer beware to existing owners keep the sales receipt handy for return of your unit. Sadly I am left with a brick because I cannot find the original receipt for the first unit.