As expected, Apple has released an updated
iPhone Smart Battery Case alongside the
release of the iPhone 7. As expected it
addresses the key issue of the 4.7 inch iPhone
not having enough battery power to make it
through a decent day’s work. And as expected,
upgrading users who have the iPhone 6 Smart
Battery Case will have to decide if they want to
sacrifice the new optical image stabilised
camera, or hand over another ninety-nine
dollars to Apple just to get the same
functionality they already have with the
existing case.
All of which sums up the latest iPhone
experience in a nutshell. Take last year’s
model, tweak it just enough so everyone feels
the need to upgrade to the latest model, and
rely on a bigger number in the specification
sheet to make it feel ‘new’ while retaining the
same functionality.
With so much time spent talking about the
choice of colors and finish on the iPhone 7, this
would have been a good time to tweak the
design of the Battery Case to something that
looked attractive, alluring, and Apple-like.
Unfortunately the case still looks like a rushed
school science project.
Yes the functionality of the battery case is
there, but the form of the case still looks
improvised. There are no clean lines, the
battery pack projects out like an awkward
balcony, and the charging LED is still on the
inside of the case and not visible when the
iPhone is in situ. Annoyingly, the new case
makes no accommodation for the iPhone 6 or
iPhone 6S.
In the past, Apple has sweated the small
details. To take one example the centre of the
speaker holes, lightning port, and the 3.5mm
headphone jack (when it was present) all line
up along a single axis. Because Apple has
moved the centre point of the camera lens, the
cutout for the larger camera housing on the
iPhone 7 Smart Battery Case still obscures the
lens on the iPhone 6 and 6S. The same is true
going in the opposite direction – pop the
iPhone 7 into the older generation of Smart
Battery Cover and the camera lens is once
more obscured.
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