I swung by MacWorld Expo on Thursday the 11th, and picked up a HyperMac Nano (HM Nano) battery for my iPhone. I have to say that I am extremely disappointed in the battery. It looks fantatastic but sucks at what it’s supposed to do. The HM Nano is supposed to be able to charge an iPhone 1.5 times. I can’t even get 80% charge out of it.

I walked into the Expo and HyperMac is the fist booth you see. They have an awesome set up with huge sign displaying their name and photos of the products. Two tables with all colors laid out charging various Apple devices. I’ve been in the market for a back up battery. I got one off of Woot! a year ago and it treated me well. It is a bit on the bulky side and I have to carry around a long doc connector cable. So the HM Nano solved my problems of convenience. The Dock Connector cable is connected to the battery and it is the size of 1.5 Zippo lighters stacked on top of each other. It’s equally thin as a Zippo lighter. I can slide that thing into my jean’s pockets and not have to worry about it. It has a fantastic design and it matches the black iPhone with the shiny black coating and chrome accents.

Vendors also sell their products at the Expo and usually for a discount. The HM Nano is normally $70.00 (pretty steep) but at the Expo it was $50.00 with an additional 10% off. $45.00 to me was a reasonable price for a well designed battery back up. Before I bought the HM Nano I specifically asked the salesman if the HM Nano will give me at least one full charge. He told me that it would charge my phone 1.5 times. I was stoked and bought it. Now here’s the disappointed part. I went out on Friday night and my phone was down to 5%. No big deal though, I got an HM Nano on me. Plugged it an barely got 60% out of it. So I figured maybe it wasn’t fully charged and ready to go out of the box like the salesman also told me as I was leaving the booth. I fully charged the device that night and went out all day  Saturday. It barely charged my phone to 80% before it died.

Fortunately, it was 5:00PM (Expo closes at 6:00PM) and I was still downtown San Francisco. I hoofed it back to MacWorld and went to the HyperMac booth. They were nice enough to give me a replacement on the spot and was told again that the HM Nano was ready to go out of the box. A friend of mine’s phone was down to 5% battery so I loaned my brand new HM Nano to her for the rest of the evening. Her phone only got a 92% charge. The HM Nano has an 1800 mAh battery and the iPhone has a 1200 mAh battery, so I’m assuming only under optimal conditions will it provide me with 1.5 charges. By optimal I’m thinking they expect you to turn your phone off and not use it while it fully charges. Overall, I wish I didn’t buy  it and and am considering returning it. The only reason keeping me from returning it is having to drive down to Sunnyvale, CA or have to pay for shipping to send it back to them. It doesn’t feel like any of that will be worth my time.

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