¶ The Hunchback of Cupertino

This morning Apple released the iPhone 6s Smart Battery Case. While it says 6s in the name it works fine with iPhone 6 as well. Sorry Plus-sized iPhones, your extra-hugeness has enough battery inside it to not need one of these cases.

I get it. There’s plenty of folks out there who burn through their iPhone’s battery by mid-day and need an extra charge or two to make it to bedtime. Thankfully, I’m not one of those people. It’s a rare day when I dock my iPhone at night with less than 30% on the battery meter.

But we need to talk about this case for a moment. It is well-intentioned to solve a real problem that many people experience. Well-intentioned, but hideous. Just look at that hunch on its back.

That just doesn’t look good to me. It’s like George Costanza’s wallet has been shoved into one of Apple’s lovely Silicon cases. Ged Maheux makes a great observation that this case could have used the new terraced battery tech in the MacBook to smooth out that bump a bit. Missed opportunity.

If the iPhone 6 and 6s have such small batteries that they warrant a first-party battery case, maybe it is time to say the iPhone is thin enough for a while. Not to mention the additional annoyance of having the camera stick out a bit from the back.

Instead of chasing thinness, I think it is time to shift gears and focus on extending battery life and making the camera flush with the back again.

In the meantime, if you need a battery case and like to keep things in the Apple family, $99 will cure what ails you.