Why I’d love a Smart Battery Case for iPhone XS

A Smart Battery case for iPhone XS would take its already impressive battery life to the next level, while only adding extra bulk when and if you absolutely needed it. Gimme.

Through the miracles of hyper-efficient technology and hyper-aggressive power management, iPhone XS gets gets even better battery life than the iPhone X — by 30 minutes. iPhone XS Max, much better still. Yet I want more. I need more.

Everything from Instagram to Snapchat, Pokémon Go to ARKit apps — which light up the screen, the radios, and location services — gobble up power faster than ever before.

You can make iPhones thicker, but then they're heavier and harder to hold up for long periods of time, all the time. And if you can't use your iPhone for as long as you want, who cares how much battery life it has? Unless, of course, that extra thickness and weight can be put on and taken off only when and if you really need it.

That's where a new Smart Battery Case comes in. I've wanted one for a couple years already and now, increasingly, hints in code and inventories are showing we just might get it.

Best Battery Packs for iPhone XS

The really smart battery

The Smart Battery case is of my favorite Apple products of the last few years is. A lot of customers and even reviewers completely underestimated it at first. They couldn't see past the hump being hella ugly and the "milliamp cost" messing with their pricing preconceptions.

Previous battery cases were a mixed blessing. They often reduced radio reception, forcing the phone to amp up its radios just to maintain a signal, and burning power just as it was trying to recharge. The Smart Battery Case cut the sides away, leaving the hump, so as not to interfere, and then added a signal booster to improve reception and prevent the drain so the battery could focus on charging.

Likewise, many battery cases would put iOS into plugged-in mode where, with the expectation of unlimited power, it would turn on networking to download content updates, sync large amounts of data, stop worrying about race-to-sleep, and more. The Smart Battery Case would insist iOS stay in mobile mode so that none of those extra activities would fire, and none of their extra power demands would affect charging.

It all added up to Smart Battery case the best way to add extra power to your iPhone. The hump was form-over-function and "milliamp efficiency" the critical stat.

Whenever I went out with iPhone 6s or iPhone 7, I had the Smart Battery case with me. It got me through travel, where lousy airport reception and roaming would otherwise shred my battery life, and conferences and shows where there was often no time to plug in.

iPhone Xs battery life tips

The case for Xs

I've been using iPhone X and iPhone XS for over a year now and it's been a champ, even under the grueling load of reviewing and writing about its every new flaw and feature. It manages to last almost as long as my iPhone Plus of yore but fits in my hand and pocket like the regular sized iPhone. It's blissful.

Because it's only about the size of a regular iPhone, it's made me wonder what already iPhone Plus level battery life would be like... with a Smart Battery Case option to go with it?

I think it would be like iPhone XS Max, which is a tank.

And iPhone Xs Max with a smart battery case? Forget it. Tanker.

Inductive reasoning

The best question around a new Smart Battery Case is what it would be like in the age of inductive charging. Would it ignore it completely and function like the Smart Battery Case of yore? Would it embrace it and include the coils necessary to charge the case on an inductive pad, even at the expense of battery cell volume?

Apple might go for strict power efficiency here rather than charging convenience, because that's literally the smart approach, but it'll be interesting to see if and how it all plays out.

Rumors and hints notwithstanding, when it comes to anything power related, I've learned to only expect it when I see it.

Still, this is probably the Apple product I'd most love to show up in stockings this holiday season.

Originally published in November 2017, updated for iPhone XS in December 2018