Apple Launches $99 MagSafe Battery Pack

It’s a little late in the annual iPhone cycle — we might learn about this year’s new iPhones in two months — but presumably this battery pack will work with MagSafe-compatible iPhones for a few years to come. (Mark Gurman first wrote about this product back in February.)

The closest competitor is probably Anker’s $46 PowerCore Magnetic 5K. Apple’s battery pack is smaller — maybe quite a bit smaller — but Anker’s has more storage capacity. With Apple’s, you can plug your iPhone into a wall charger and it will reverse-charge the battery pack, if attached. Anker’s only charges in one direction, from the battery pack to the iPhone, but you can charge the iPhone while the battery pack is connected to a wall charger.

Apple’s battery pack works at 15W — the full speed of MagSafe — but only when the battery pack itself is plugged into a wall charger. When it’s in your pocket, it charges your iPhone at 5W, the same speed at which Anker’s always charges. The other notable difference is that only Apple’s battery pack shows its charge level in the iOS Battery widget.

A bit of a shame that Apple is only selling it in white (for now?) — most of their recent battery cases have been available in both black and white (and sometimes pink and Product Red).

★ Tuesday, 13 July 2021