Mophie’s iPhone 5 Battery Case, The Juice Pack Helium, Now Available For $79.95

Mophie is one of the most trusted names in iPhone and mobile backup batteries, and the company has finally debuted its battery case for iPhone 5. The Mophie Juice Pack Helium is around 13 percent thinner than the Air version released for iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 (get it? Helium is lighter than air), and retails for $79.95 right now direct from the Mophie store. The cases should ship in time for Valentine’s Day, the company says.

The new Mophie boasts a 1500 mAh battery, which keen readers will notice is technically enough to double the 1,440 mAh power station inside the iPhone 5. That’s enough to boost your device’s talk time life by up to 6 hours on 3G, or provide another 6 hours of cellular browsing, 7 hours of WiFi browsing, 30 hours of audio playback or 7 hours of movie watching, according to Mophie.

The new slim down design is offered in both dark metallic and metallic silver colors, with the dark scheme shipping first, and it has the same LED power indicator and forward-facing speaker ports that have made the Mophie line a winner for the past few years. Of course the things can also stand to shed some weight and girth, so this new thinner design is very welcome, but the fact is that when you need juice and you’re without any kind of outlet, having one of these on hand can really save the day, and they take up less space than something like an external charger.

One final advantage of the Juice Pack Helium is that it has a micro USB port to take the place of the Lightning connector, which handles pass-through charging and data syncing just fine. That’s good news if you’ve already got a ton of micro USB cables (one is also included) lying around from other devices and don’t want to invest heavily in replacing all those 3o-pin Apple chargers from your past iOS devices. This may be one of those cases where a blogger’s needs may not reflect the larger community’s, but I’m definitely a believer given Mophie’s track record, and for sure picking one of these up.