UPDATE: Bless Mophie’s hearts – they say this post and sent me two replacement caps. Thanks, Mophie!

When my friend Bill De Rouchey showed me the external battery he was using with his iPhone at Web Visions a few months ago in Portland I got excited. Whenever I’m out all day at a conference or other intensive event I tend to use up the battery on my phone. When on the road this leads to a frustrating inability to phone home in time for timezone-shifted goodnights.

As soon as I got home I marched down to the Apple store in fake Bay Street in Emeryville and bought an nice black Mophie case for myself. I also noticed that the “I’m the decider” t-shirt I picked up at the first iPhoneDevCamp was from Mophie as well. Small world!

Better still, the Mophie case really did the trick. It’s not as grippy and protective as ruggedized Speck case, but it solves a real paint point for me.

There’s just one problem, and it has more to do with industrial design than anything else. I was having to switch from case to case a lot, and the top part of the Mophie has a very thin plastic strip where it surrounds the volume buttons on the side of the iPhone.

Very quickly this area snapped, and then a large piece broke off (see the photo above), and ultimately more of it is chipping away still. At this point the aesthetic value of the case is nil although the functionality is still nearly as good as when I first got it.

I’d like to get a replacement. I’d like the Apple store or Mophie to give me a replacement, but I’d really like to hear that this design flaw has been fixed and that my replacement doesn’t have it.

A complaint posted on twitter fell on deaf ears so this is the old-fashioned blog product customer rant. Let’s see if it helps.