Battery Packs Extend iPhone 3G Usage; Optus Claims Highest iPhone Sales

I won’t bat an eyelash if ever there are a lot of you new iPhone 3G owners who’re grumbling about the lackluster battery life especially when you tend to use the 3G functionality. Of course, you can always turn everything off to preserve battery life, but then you might just use an old-fashioned mobile phone and it’ll be the same.

For the rest of you who want to use their handsets to the fullest, there’s always something called a battery pack. Battery packs for the Apple iPhone 3G could serve as back-up batteries for extended life. They add a couple of inches or so to your handset, but that’s better than nothing, right? The Kensington Mini and FastMac iV are older battery packs meant for the first-gen iPhone, although they could be used for the second-gen as well. A new contender is the iPhoneck, a power extender using a lithium-ION battery which could be charged within 90 minutes using an iPhone dock. The iPhoneck would be released on August 1 and is now available for pre-order for US$42.99.

In other news, Optus claims the highest sales of iPhone 3G in Australia. Says Maha Krishnapillai,  Optus director of government and corporate affairs, “We’re very happy with the result for Optus — we think we’ve captured by far the lion’s share of the iPhone sales because we do have the best pricing models.” So, from which provider did you get your iPhone 3G handset from?

via Gizmodo and CNET