PowerSkins: battery extenders for HTC, Samsung, Blackberry phones

One of the most annoying aspects of travelling is running out of battery on your smartphone just when you really need it -- when checking emails just after getting off a long flight, or trying to access maps in a foreign city.

iPhone users have had a good range of options to bump up their battery life (we recently looked at three of the best battery cases for iPhone 4), but there haven't been any for people getting inadequate battery life from handsets like the HTC Desire HD, Samsung Galaxy S2, Google Nexus S or BlackBerry.

A new range of smartphone battery skins from XPAL is now addressing that gap in the marketplace.

XPAL says it is tackling the challenge of making battery cases for a broader range of handsets head-on, even though Android/BlackBerry/Windows Phone 7 handsets often have a shelf life of less than six months.

Currently, XPAL has cases available for:

• HTC HD7
• HTC HD2
• Samsung Galaxy i9000 / i9003
• HTC Desire HD
• Samsung i9020T
• Google Nexus S
• BlackBerry 8520
• BlackBerry 8530
• BlackBerry 9700
• BlackBerry 9780
• HTC Sensation
• Samsung Galaxy S2 (available end of August)

^{Above: a PowerSkin on an HTC Desire HD.}

The PowerSkins all have a capacity of between 1200mAh and 1620mAh, depending on the phone model, which means that they deliver roughly the battery life of the handset's inbuilt battery again.

Because charging the handset's inbuilt battery too often can wear it out prematurely, PowerSkins also come with an on/off switch so you can decide when to start giving your handset additional juice -- the best strategy is usually to only do so when the handset's inbuilt battery is about to run out.

PowerSkins are distributed in Australia by MrMobile and cost $89.95 each.

danwarne