Mophie is releasing the next generation of its phone charging/file storing hardware with a new focus: file sharing.
Today the company announced that its Space Packs, a phone case that both charges your phone and acts as data storage, will now be available for the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and iPad Mini. Mophie also launched an entirely new product called the Space Station -- an external hard drive and battery-charging device that can store up to 128GB of data.
Mophie first made a name for itself by creating sleek little external battery packs to give your cellphone a boost of power on the go. Last year, it made its first step into file storage with the Space Pack for iPhone 5 and 5S -- a phone case capable of charging your phone and storing up to 32GB worth of data.
The new phone and iPad cases are designed to be as slim and lightweight as possible, though they still have a certain amount of heft to them. The Space Pack for iPhone 6 and the iPad Mini provides for 100 percent battery charge and 32-128GB of file storage. The Space Pack for iPhone 6 Plus will only deliver a 50 percent charge, but comes with the same file storage capabilities.
The Space Station, on the other hand can give the iPad Mini a full charge, and will be able to replenish the iPhone 6 Plus over two times. Meanwhile, the iPhone 6 can get three full charges out of the Space Station. All devices are equipped with data storage ranging from 32GB up to 128GB.
The hardware updates come alongside a software update. Mophie's free Space app, which launched last year, allows you to move photos, videos, and document files from your device to your Space Pack. It also offers some additional organizational tools, like the ability to sort files by date modified, name, or file type in the case of documents.
You cannot use your Space Pack or Space Station to back up your iPhone, unfortunately. But if you don't want to dump your photos, videos, and other space-consuming file types to either a computer or an external hard drive that you may lose track of, this is a nice alternative.
What's new on the Space app is file sharing. Mophie is now providing a portal for you to quickly share files with whoever you want -- all you need is Wi-Fi. The feature is akin to Apple's Air Drop feature, which allows you to send content between two Apple devices within a certain proximity.
To use it, the person you're sending content to needs to put your device's IP address into a browser, which will trigger a webpage that asks you for a four-digit alphanumeric code. Typing in the correct code will download the file directly onto your friend's device.
Mophie's focus is on local storage, as opposed to cloud storage, which its Space app can also hook into. The app prompted me several times to link up my iCloud account to my Space app. The app can also download files from Dropbox and Box.
In terms of file storage, Mophie doesn't offer much that its cloud storage competitors don't. Dropbox, Box, Amazon, and iCloud all offer a certain amount of free data storage. Amazon offers a cutthroat rate of $60 a year for unlimited storage of any file type.
Mophie's main selling points for its non-cloud storage is that you can access your files without Wi-Fi. There's also the added bonus of being able to charge your mobile device on the go.
The company says it saw the largest spike in use when Apple released iOS 8, which required 5.7GB of free storage. Many, including myself, rushed to offload their photos and other data-heavy files in order to update their phones. For such an immediate update, I can certainly understand the appeal of being to remove files from your phone and still being able to access them locally.
But with so many cloud storage offerings and external hard drives getting smaller and more portable, Mophie's new Space product line may need to up its game.