Accessories

How real is the iPhone 5se? Or the iPad Air 3? Real enough that Chinese case manufacturers already have products (or at least mockups) to sell. At iPhone Life, we received a press release from at least one firm with prices and photos for its iPhone 5se and iPad Air 3 cases. The photos are reproduced here, and seem to indicate that the iPhone 5se will resemble the flat-edged iPhone 5 on the sides, but with the rounded bottom of the iPhone 6 series. The iPad Air 3 case doesn't look that different from the iPad Air 2. The case appears to have large openings on the outside, as the next tablet is expected to have four speakers, like the iPad Pro.

The folks at Landing Zone make some nice landing docks for MacBooks so I was interested in checking out their IONA dock ($59) for iPhones. The dock has some features that other stands don't offer. First, the IONA can swivel left and right. This is nice for my setup, as my desk doubles as a nightstand. So during the day, my iPhone can face my chair and at night it rotates to face my bed.

This is the official announcement of the iPhone life Biweekly Giveaway! Be sure to enter the giveaway at iphoneLife.com/giveaways to win prizes, which we'll announce February 22! We are raffling off tons of great accessories for FREE.

In the 24th episode, the iPhone Life team is joined by long-time iPhone Life contributor, Mike Riley, to talk about the iPad's role in creating and performing music and the best apps and gear for getting started. Other topics include Error 53, which is reportedly bricking iPhones that have been repaired by third parties, and Tim Cook's Super Bowl twitter blunder. Plus, the iPhone Life kids weigh in on their parents' tech rules.

One of the things that frustrated me most when I recently got the iPhone 6s was its size (yes, I was one of those people who longed for the days of my 4-inch iPhone 5s). The problem was that I had a pretty difficult time using the iPhone 6s one handed. Yeah, I get it, there’s that whole Reachability feature that Apple added to help solve this exact issue. But let’s be honest—nobody likes Reachability. I’ve activated the feature a lot since purchasing my phone, but never on purpose. So when I saw the 6Sense Tempered Glass Screen Protector by Avant Guard at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show—which allows you to activate functions located at the top corners of your screen (like the Back and Edit buttons in the Photos app) from the bottom of your screen instead—I was pretty excited by the concept.

Thanks to everyone who entered the February 8 iPhone Life Biweekly Giveaway! Every other week we give away amazing prizes, so if you didn't win this time, make sure you enter the February 22 giveaway and tell your friends to enter too!

And the winner is... (drum roll please):

The iPhone is great, but it still needs better battery life, and that means there is a lot of demand for battery cases. Even Apple recently released its first battery case. So there are no shortages of battery cases out there and I've tried most. The most recent one I've tried in my search for the best iPhone 6s battery case was the PowerShadow and Dock ($99+$49.99) from Spyder. I'm still holding out for something better.