Tired of having to look after the battery on your iPhone? Then the Fastmac TruePower iV battery charger may be the device you are looking for.
The Fastmac TruePower iV is a jacket style charger. Slip your iPhone or iPod Touch into the jacket and you have instant power. The rechargeable battery in the extender is 3100mAh and is claimed to give you up to 24 hours of talk time, 30 days of standby, or more importantly for me 21 hours of video and 72 hours of audio. More than enough to get me from one power charge to the next…
TruePower iV side profile
The price of the additional power is an increase in size, both in terms of thickness and length. With your iPhone in the TruePower jacket the device is extended by just over an inch, but the real space comes from the thickness. The TruePower iV triples the depth of the iPhone making it pretty bulky.
This doesn’t have to be a problem as you need only slip the phone into the jacket when you need to charge it. At other times you can leave it in your pocket or bag.
TruePower iV controls
The controls for the TruePower iV are located on the back of the battery extender, and consist a power switch, a row of indicators and a status button. Pressing the status button lights the 4 indicators to show how much power is left in the battery. The power button is used to switch the juice to the iPhone on and off.
TruePower iV connections
This brings us nicely on to the connections on the bottom of the battery extender. These are the normal 30 pin Apple iPhone/iPod connector and also a USB connector.
The USB provides power to auxiliary devices such as a headset or possibly another iPod. The USB is live when the power switch is on so you dont need to have the iPhone connected to a power source for it to work.
One great thing about the 30 pin iPhone connector is that unlike the iPhone it is very tolerant of differing power supplies, I have tested it with a number of car adapters and they all worked, unlike the virgin iPhone which didn’t work with any…
TruePower iV Flash light
Moving up to the top of the charger jacket you can see a cutout for the camera, but more importantly there is a bright LED which can be turned on to provide some additional lighting for you camera snaps. The light will be on full time so it can also be used as a flash light or more interestingly a video light when and if Apple provide us with a video recording application.
This leaves us with the front of the accessory. Here you can see the contours of the jacket follow the iphone screen with cutouts for the home button and the speakers. There are also slots on the bottom of the jacket to allow the sound to exit there as well.
TruePower iV Speaker Grills
With a price tag of $99.95 from Fastmac in the USA or £99.95 in the UK from USA Best it is not cheap, but if, like me, you are constantly running your iPhone’s battery down then this could be the unit for you.
