The Mophie Palm battery is perhaps the most sophisticated charging accessory ever

The Palm phone is not a good phone. This is not a good replacement for a phone. But now it's a phone to join an incredibly rare club: it now has a $ 59.95 Mophie Juice Pack battery pack, making it the only device to get a custom case from the accessories company other than an Apple or Samsung phone.

Now, I understand why someone who bought a Palm phone would like a Mophie case for a Palm phone – the device itself has only a 800 mAh battery, providing a autonomy that my colleague Dieter Bohn describes as "downright atrocious". At 900 mAh, the Mophie Juice Pack for the Palm phone is actually larger than the phone. So that should help you, and it adds support for the wireless charge that the regular phone does not have.

But I can not, for my life, understand why Mophie would take all his time, his efforts and his money to design, design, manufacture, market and sell such a device. Could there be so many proprietary Palm owners in Verizon that it was worthy of presenting, for example, a case for an LG or OnePlus phone?

The price adds an insult to injury: at $ 60 for a 900 mAh battery, you pay scandalous premium for the convenience of design, even for the already expensive packs of Mophie. (For comparison, RavPower offers a 22,000 mAh USB-C battery with 27.5 times that offered by the Mophie battery at a price of $ 40.)

Photo: Mophie

In addition to what could be the most sophisticated battery, Mophie also announced a new Powerstation Keychain, which features a 1200 mAh battery with a built-in USB-C cord in a convenient size. It's also quite expensive for the amount of fees you get, but the small form factor, the built-in cable and the carabiner could be enough to tip the scales in its favor. If nothing else, at $ 39.95 (for more battery), it's at least a better deal than the Palm phone.