If you have a smartphone, chances are that you also carry around a charger, cords and/or external battery. I normally have one portable battery with me at all times. When I’m at a convention or traveling, I have at least two of them in my backpack, plus cables in case one of my traveling companions need to use it.
I picked up the PowerSkin PoP’n 3 at CES in January and have been using it for the past few months. It has an unusual design, features and compact size.
One of the more unusual design features is the soft rubber suction cups and circular nano adhesive anchor on the back side of the pack. This will attach the PoP’n 3 to most smooth surfaced phones and cases. So when in use it can stick to the back of your phone and pop right off when you’re done using it.
It has the perfect size to fit in back of the iPhone and carry in the palm of your hand. Very slim and not too bulky or uncomfortable to carry in your hand. Size of the PoP’n 3 is 4.41″ x 2.36″ x 0.49″ and weighs about 3.81 ounces.
Another feature I love is that it has a built-in cable at the bottom. Eliminates the need to carry around a charging cable. Since the cable is at the bottom, it’s short and plugs in perfectly. No excess dangling charging cable to deal with.
It has a on/off power button on the top and 4 LED indicator lights on the side to show how much of a charge it has remaining. Battery capacity is 4000 mAH with an input of 2.1A and output of 1A. The pack fully recharged my iPhone 5 in about two hours. It will give your phone a couple days of extra power.
Colors available: Gold, Silver and Space Gray with Lightning or Micro USB connector cables.
The PoPn’ 3 is good, but it does have a couple of drawbacks:
• One is the suction cup feature. The suctions do not hold very well by themselves. I turned it upside down and on its side and it detached from the phone pretty easily. The reason could have been because of the material of the iPhone case. Stuck much better to the iPhone without the case. But when using the circular nano adhesive anchor it sticks much better to the case.
• The other is the built-in charging cable. The rubbery material used for the cable is flexible but doesn’t bend very well. So when attached to the back of the phone, it causes the charging cable to bend in an awkward angle that positions the charger on the back of the phone crookedly. The problem is easily fixable just by moving the charger in a different position that can cover up the camera lens. The problem might be because it is made to be used with an iPhone 6 more than the iPhone 5, but it works for both models.
I do have to say that their customer service is really good. Right out of the box, my PoP’n 3 had a major problem recharging itself to a full charge. Emailed their customer service about the problem, but before they could do anything I needed to register the product. Once that was done, by the next day, I had an email with a shipping label to send the charger back to them so they could determine the problem. Less than a week later I received an email letting me know they were sending me a replacement charger. The new charger arrived a couple days later working great.
Price for the PowerSkin PoP’n 3 runs around $50-$60.
Visit www.power-skin.com for more information.
