Yesterday, I purchased the Incase power slider for my iPhone 3G S.  It boasts that it will double your iPhone battery life while protecting it with it’s case.  Since battery life is important to me and I find my self constantly running out of battery (usually around 2pm each day), I was excited to get my hands on this.  Even posted a tweet about it.

Incase Twitter Update

Incase power slide image

The initial reviews I read indicated that it was worthy of purchase at the right price.  Best Buy had it for $47, which I thought was a great deal (since it was originally priced at $99).  The packaging indicated iPhone 3G, but not specifically the iPhone 3G S.  I asked a worker in the mobile phone department if it would work OK in the 3G S and she indicated “yes, I use it on my iPhone 3G S every day.”.  Sold.

The instructions say to fully charge the device before putting your iPhone in it. So, like a good person who just RTFM’d, I plugged it in and let it sit for a couple hours until it was fully charged.  What happened next was what surprised me…

I inserted the iPhone into the bottom part of the shell (per instructions), then put the top part of the shell on.  The battery on the iPhone did indeed show that it was charging, which is what the user manual said it would do.  Then, without warning, my 5 bars of 3G signal, disappeared and went to No Service.  I was shocked, so I power cycled the iPhone, just incase it needed to officially recognize the new battery device.  Still, No Service.

I took it out and put it back in, probably about a dozen or so times.  Each time, the No Service indicator came up about 5 seconds after using the Incase Power Slider.

I googled some more and found other reports of people having the exact same issue.  A few people mentioned that Incase retired that model of product because of issues, but I couldn’t find anything to support that claim.  Since I really need my phone, I decided to return the Incase Power Slider to Best Buy and find something different.

I ended up with the Invisible Shield.  So far so good with the Invisible Shield, but that’s a different post…

Summary: Incase Power Slider = Fail (in my humble opinion)