UNTIL PHONES LAST a week per charge, everyone’s in the market for a battery case. Most of them have a problem: Once you slap a battery pack on your smartphone, there’s no room for fancy lens attachments. Most bulky, pro-minded lens cases don’t have built-in batteries, so you’re stuck with a decision between more juice or more photographic firepower.
Well, you were stuck with that decision, because Moment’snew case pulls double duty. It’s a high-capacity battery case, and it’s built to accept the company’s excellent lens attachments. The thing’s even got a physical shutter button on it—one that uses the Lightning connector, making it much faster than the older Moment case’s Bluetooth button. You also get DSLR-type actions with the button when you take photos within Moment’s app: A half press resets focus and exposure, a full press snaps a photo, and a press-and-hold action fires a burst.
Moment’s Battery Photo Case is roughly the same size as Mophie’s very popular Juice Pack, but it actually outdoes Mophie in terms of capacity. The iPhone 7 version of the case more than doubles the phone’s battery life, thanks to a 2,500mAh cell stuffed inside of it. The iPhone 7 Plus case goes even further, with a 3,500mAh battery to sip from. There’s no physical charge switch on the case as there is on Mophie’s stuff; you choose when you want to recharge via the Moment app.
This is also Moment’s first case that’s made to work with both lenses on the iPhone 7 Plus, albeit not at the same time. There’s two mounting slots on the case that match up with that phone’s dual-lens setup, so you can use the company’s macro, fisheye, wide-angle, and telephoto lenses with either one.
We usually don’t get down with Kickstarters (they’re unpredictable in terms of quality, and they often don’t even ship), but Moment has a solid track record. The Battery Photo Case will set you back $100 if it reaches its $500,000 goal on Kickstarter. They’ll hit that number number quickly; Moment has a strong following among mobile photography enthusiasts.
Also on offer is a new Photo case—a basic protective case with a mount for Moment lenses—and a redesigned wide-angle lens that works better with the iPhone 7, but also fits Moment mounts for Pixel, Galaxy phones, and older iPhones.
