iPhone smart battery case boosts talk time to 25 hours

Apple has released a battery case that will boost the battery life of your iPhone 6 — if you're not too embarrassed about your iPhone being seen wearing it.

Apple's Smart Battery Case, its first product of this kind, is now on sale online at the Canadian Apple store for $129.

According to Apple, the case features a silicone exterior that slips over your phone and a built-in battery that will boost your phone's:

• Talk time from 14 to 25 hours.
• Internet use from 10 hours to 18 hours on LTE networks.

A variety of battery cases from competitors are already on the market to capitalize on widespread complaints from iPhone users' about their device's unsatisfactory battery life.

The price of Apple's new product is similar to that of battery cases by competitors such as Mophie and Otterbox.

But unlike competing products, Apple's, which touts the fact that it is "designed by Apple," has a battery that sticks out, prompting criticism from reviewers.

Vancouver-based technology writer Geoffrey Daniel, who reviewed the case for The Verge in a YouTube video, called it a "design embarrassment."

Wired called the product "so ugly it's almost sarcastic." Apple has long been known for paying far more attention to the look of its products compared to its traditional competitors.

Samuel Gibbs, technology reporter for The Guardian, described it as being "stuck like a lump" on the outside of the case, and said the overall design looked "like a cheap Chinese knockoff." His colleague, technology editor Alex Hern, was even less charitable, questioning why Apple's newest phone "requires a $99 [US] tumour to last from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m." instead of being made "two millimetres thicker in the first place" for longer battery life.

Peter Sayer, Paris bureau chief for IDG news service, noted that the case appears to add a lot of width to the 7.1 mmm iPhone 6S. He mused in PC World about why Apple was releasing the product at all.

"Maybe," he wrote, "Apple is testing customer acceptance of a thicker, not thinner, new phone."