You’re ready to update your status or respond to those incoming emails – then your smartphone dies. And you’re without your charger. Running out of cell battery juice at a critical moment has happened even to the most organized – even those Type As.
That’s where the Mophie juice pack comes in. It’s a durable, portable battery-charging case for smartphones that can more than double the battery life of an Apple iPhone or Samsung Galaxy S III Android phone. And TI battery-charging integrated circuits (ICs) are what give the Mophie its battery bo
ost.
“I remember one time I was driving, and my phone died an hour before my car broke down,” says TI employee accounts specialist Kyle Brown, who is a personal fan of the charger. “If it had not been for the Mophie case that was charging my phone back up, I might have been stuck out in the middle of nowhere for hours.”
How it works
The Mophie juice pack has a rechargeable lithium battery. When you slide your phone into the case, a connector at the base plugs into the micro-USB port at the bottom of your phone. Flip the standby switch on the back from red to green to start charging your phone.
To charge the Mophie juice pack, simply connect it to a USB power source, such as a wall charger, car charger or your computer, with the included micro-USB cable. You can charge the juice pack while it’s on or off your phone. If you charge with the case on, it will also charge your phone.
The juice pack contains TI’s bq24040, which serves as the USB Li-ion battery-charger IC, and also features the bq2425x and bq2419x family of battery-charging ICs, which TI unveiled on March 25. These ICs enable faster, cooler charging for single-cell, Li-Ion battery packs for an array of applications ranging from power banks and packs to 4G LTE routers, Wi-Fi speakers, portable medical and industrial designs. The Mophie juice pack also contains the LM324 operational amplifier.
“It gives you very good protection, and puts your mind at ease knowing that your phone will not run out of battery,” Brown says. “They have always done a great job keeping the cases sleek and stylish because they don’t make it feel like a brick.”
For more information on the Mophie case, click here.