When Apple launched this, the iPhone 6s (and 6) Smart Battery Case, there was much ridicule at the ‘hump’ design. After all, it’s obvious where the (ahem) battery is, there’s no obvious attempt at styling and… how much is this case again? However, after trying a number of alternatives from third parties, it turns out that Apple’s solution is far better suited to every day, in-situ, real world use. Who knew?

Sometimes looks aren’t everything, you know. The principle of an extended battery case for the classic iPhone 6/6s design, one in which the phone can live most of the time, providing protection and massive battery extension, has been taken up by at least half a dozen third parties, not least Mophie, possibly the best known in this space. These vary in price (in the UK) from £40 up to £90 (the Apple accessory here slots in near the top end, at £80) but these share various typical characteristics:

1. they’re plastic and shiny and not very grippy in the hand
2. they’re overly bulky
3. they charge via microUSB, probably for licensing and cost reasons
4. they don’t wear very well – the Mophie Juice Pack Air we’ve been using for the last year hasn’t failed us yet, but it’s an ugly mess in terms of its battered paintwork

Apple’s design for the Smart Battery Case solves all four issues:

1. it’s made of a silicone polymer and is very grippy in the hand, there’s almost zero chance of dropping the phone here
2. it’s minimally bulky – by which I mean that there’s bulk for the battery by necessity, and for electronics and port conduits at the bottom, but everywhere else the silicone has been wrapped to be form fitting to the original iPhone 6s as much as possible.
3. it charges by Lightning connector – of course, this being first party Apple, through and through
4. although we’ve only had it for a short while, the silicone polymer construction should wear extremely well indeed – we’ve all seen the typical wrap around ‘dumb’ silicone cases for other phones and they tend to last a lifetime

But on with the illustrated review itself – while the Smart Battery Case looked odd when it was launched, in contrast to the relative monstrosities from third parties that have appeared in the last 18 months, it looks almost sleek!

It’s obvious as to where the battery is, but once you get over this mental ‘Apple usually hide everything’ hurdle, there’s little to complain about – the sides of the phone remain fairly thin – ditto the bottom – two points where you really notice extra thickness in all the third party battery extensions.

Apple’s presentation in the box is first class, as usual, with the Smart Battery Case fitting around a shaped stand inside the box.

There are several different materials to note – the interior of the case, cradling the iPhone 6s, is a soft touch material that will be extra gentle with the phone and hopefully avoid any scratching when inserting and extracting the phone (not that you’ll do this very often). The side buttons are cover suspended in a soft rubber, while the main body of the case is a tough silicone polymer, designed to be both durable and grippy.

It’s down at the bottom end where most of the magic happens. The speaker port and microphone hole both wrap the sound round 90 degrees from and to the iPhone’s speaker and bottom mike – successfully, there’s little or no degradation. The headphone hole is kept wide enough for the full body of Apple original headphones to fit, though some chunkier third party ones may struggle or need (ahem) trimming with a scalpel or craft knife.

The Lightning connector goes into the phone, of course, and there’s female Lightning jack on the very bottom of the case, for input to the Smart Battery.

In the hand, the Smart Battery Case is slightly underwhelming, but it’s more impressive with the phone in and with everything working away. Note that the black one is probably the most practical (in terms of not showing dirt over time), while the white one is by far the prettiest (at least in terms of fitting in with the usual Apple designs and themes) but white silicone does tend to get grubby so we shied away.

After a couple of years of stories of the original iPhone 6 and 6 Plus ‘bending’ around stress points where the buttons are located, it’s good to report that similar physics are used in a good way here – the top section of the polymer case is designed to bend backwards as shown above, with the ‘hinge’ being at the mute switch cutout. With the top section bent backwards slightly, the iPhone 6 or 6s is then slid in from the top. This happens smoothly and securely, after which the top section is allowed to return to the vertical.

With the Smart Battery Case in place, the original gold iPhone 6s colour became irrelevant, since all you really see is white. This could even be spun as a good point, since I’m sure there must be people reading this who bought ‘gold’ or ‘rose gold’ for whatever reason and then regretted it. With this case in place, all these iPhones are ‘white’! And the ‘space grey’ iPhones will just match the case, of course.

In the hand, the grip is terrific, with the material helping enormously and with the battery ‘step’ acting to allow the fingers to grip around the phone better – the ugly duckling in the case world is proving to win out at every stage, it seems…

While the iPhone 6s (or 6) is in place, Apple’s electronics in the bottom section, allied to smarts in iOS itself, mean that the charge state of both battery and phone can be monitored from the ‘Today’ swipe down pane, as shown above. Anyone who has used one of the third party iPhone 6 battery extender cases will be looking for a hardware switch to enable or disable charging, but I think Apple has done the right thing here in not giving the user a say in what happens.

Essentially, the Smart Battery Case charges the phones all the time it’s connected, giving up its own charge sacrificially. The idea being that if you did need to extract the phone and use it ‘naked’ or in another smaller case (perhaps for an event) then you’d want all the charge you could get in the device. With third party solutions it’s far too easy to charge them up but forget to flick the switch to actually charge the phone, with disastrous results. Here it all happens automatically.

The usual course of events is that you’d leave the iPhone in the case 24/7 and simply charge in the usual way with your normal Lightning cable, e.g. overnight. While charging, both the phone and Smart Battery Case receive current and so fill up at the same time, which is pretty cool. The full capacity of the add-on battery here is 1877mAh, slightly more than that in the iPhone, though when transferring charge you inevitably lose some through heat and other inefficiencies, so think of this solution as effectively doubling your range and longevity. (Third party solutions offer greater capacity though at much greater bulk and inconvenience.)

You can also charge the case on its own if your phone is off moonlighting with some other case(!), in which case a little LED lights to show charge status, as shown above (orange and then green).

Yes, the Apple iPhone 6s Smart Battery Case is expensive, but after only a week of use I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it. The iPhone 6 and 6s battery life is what it is and may or may not be enough for your daily requirements. You can try all our battery saving tips but if you need to go further and don’t want to keep plugging in an emergency charger then an in-situ battery case is almost de rigueur. In which case forget all the cheaper plastic third party offerings and go for the real deal – Apple doesn’t always know best but in this case, I contend, it does.

• Buy iPhone 6s Battery Case