The iPad Mini was basically just announced but keyboard-maker Zagg spared no time in getting two new keyboard cases out to the market. The new cases seem to to turn the iPad Mini into something that is somewhat reminiscent of a Microsoft Surface setup with a keyboard and a kickstand – only in a much smaller form factor.

There are two models of the new keyboard case, the Mini 7 and Mini 9. The Mini 7 is a seven-inch variant that spans the width of the mini, whereas the Mini 9 is a bit longer at 9-inches and offers a wider range of keys and buttons for your typing needs.

Both models are just $90 and will be avaliable for purchase starting November 2nd, the same day as the iPad Mini. Anyone interested in such a keyboard case for the upcoming iDevice? For those that aren’t sure if they even want an iPad Mini versus some of the alternative Android 7-inch devices out there, check out our article on the Mini versus Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD.

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With every generation of smartphone — soon with quad-core superphones — comes bigger screens, faster GPUs and speedier network connections.  This quite often results in shorter battery life. Not to mention all the googling, random fact checking, and tweets we’re punching out, battery life is a huge issue.

With a bag full of mobile battery packs and solar chargers we set out to find the most reliable solution to keep your smartphones and other gadgets topped up for when you run out of juice on the go.

Scosche solBAT II
I’ve always loved the idea of solar chargers. Whether you’re on the road or at home, they can reduce your inner techie’s footprint by using nothing but the sun to keep your electronics humming along. Just leave ‘em in the sun and plug in whenever you need the juice.

It sounds flawless in theory.

In practice, though, unfortunately the solBAT II has a long way to go before it will ever be a part of this utopian ideal. The $30 solBAT’s specs sound alright: A 1500mA li-ion battery, full USB port with 5v/500mA output; a solar panel on the reverse with a suction cup cradle for easy window mounting. Indicator lights. Nothing wrong there.

So why is this not the best charger to toss into your bag to keep your mp3 player or smartphone alive for those extended mountain-trail treks? The problem is that the charger needs to be in direct sunlight for four to five days! Yes, four to five days, before you’ll have a full charge. If the solBAT II is your choice for backpacking emergencies, you might be roughing it in the woods for a business week before you can charge your cell and call for help. Considering most smartphones need to be charged daily, this doesn’t exactly match up with the schedule.

Scosche recommends charging the battery using the included USB cable for the first use. After doing so, the solBAT II only charged my iPhone 4 to 32% before dying completely. If I had waited five days for that charge, I would have been less enthusiastic about giving this backup battery a second chance.

For the second attempt, it’s been sitting in my kitchen window for two days and shows no charge on the indicator. I can’t justify giving the Scosche solBAT II more than a 3/10 for most uses. Unless you’re only taking it along to refuel non-essential, low-drain devices on the road or forgo the solar panel entirely, or you live in Africa or Arizona, it’s simply not going to cut it.

IOGEAR GearPower GMP1001B
Despite the lack of solar charger, this little beast was far more impressive by comparison. At only $20 on Amazon, the GearPower’s price is right. With 2000mAh, it has more capacity than the solBAT II. Only slightly larger than a business card and 78mm (0.37 inches) thick, its tiny form factor has probably one of the best size-to-function ratios out there — perfect for keeping in your pack or purse for emergencies. The large, single button and four blue LED lights quickly let you know how much charge you’ve still got on the battery.

Depending on your phone or device’s own battery capacity, IOGEAR says the GearPower will deliver up to two full charges. In practice, it did fully charge the iPhone 4 slightly more than 1.6 times over.

The only downside of IOGEAR’s answer to the backup battery is that, of all the portable chargers we’ve tested, this is the only one without a full-size USB — likely because it’s too thin for a port that size. This means you won’t be able to use your iPod’s USB cable to charge, but rather will have to sift through the handful of adapters to find one that fits.

But, considering this is the only point really standing against the GearPower, I’d give it a solid 9/10 for price, portability and reliability.

Duracell PowerSouce Mini
An impressive little thing. With a 3Ah li-ion battery, two USB outputs and colour-coded charge indicator, it stands out above the other two as a more heavy-duty backup. It’s original selling price was $60, but it’s selling on Amazon for $25 at the moment, putting it in line with the other two.

What makes this one different, though, is its ability to charge two devices at once using the swing-out mini-USB arm for one and the full USB port for the other.

Despite being released in 2008, the PowerSource Mini is defending its place as a very portable, very reliable backup.

In testing, it charged an LG Shine Plus in no time, followed by, again, the iPhone 4 — and has a bit of extra power left over. It’s a bit bulkier than the solBAT II and the GearPower, but not by much at 6.7 x 2.4 x 8.2 cm (2.6 x 0.95 x 3.25 inches), meaning it still won’t take up too much space or add too much weight in your jacket pocket or bag.

Overall, the Duracell PowerSource Mini has earned a 8/10 in our books. It does its job, and it does it well.

Zagg Sparq 2.0
This one’s a heavyweight. The price is far more — $100 on the Zagg website or $56.63 with free shipping on Amazon — but you definitely get what you pay for. It’s also a lot bigger, at 3.5 x 3.5 x 1 inches, putting it at roughly the same size as a MacBook charger — something I’ve never had to make room for before tossing into my bag.

From what I can tell, though, they haven’t wasted any of that extra space or price.

The Sparq holds an astounding 6,000 mAh in its lithium polymer battery, which can be accessed via the “optimized” or “regular” USB ports. The optimized port, says Zagg, is “optimized for smartphones and devices capable of taking an optimized charge,” meaning it works at the same rate as the iPad charger as opposed to a standard computer USB. What’s more, it holds enough energy on one charge to refill most smartphones four times over. That’s enough to keep two phones running for a weekend-long road trip. Plus, with the extra capacity, it’s not only good for mp3 players and cell phones, but larger devices such as your PSP or PlayBook.

As with the solBAT II and the GearPower, it has four indicator lights and a single button to let you know how much power you have saved.

On one charge, it managed to fill the iPhone 4 twice, topped up a BlackBerry Torch from half and got up to 23 per cent on an iPad 2 before dying, earning the Sparq 2.0 a 10/10 for reliability, relative portability, efficiency and value for the price.

Just Mobile Gum Plus
One of the more “stylish” portable battery packs for your mobile needs.  The Gum Plus from Just Mobile is for those looking for something more aesthetically pleasing and in line with the way Apple devices look.  It will match your MacBook Air, and charge your iPod, iPhone, iPad and other USB-powered devices too.  This beast has 5200 mAh of power charge and charged our iPhone to about 80% in a little over one hour.

Silver is always better.

Sure, this one is good looking, it even has LED lights that match the older generation MacBook built-in battery indicators.  It has both a regular USB port and a mini-usb for charging it up on your wall. At $80 though it’s a bit pricey.  But we still like it because its solid aluminum design means durability, which earns it a 9/10 not only for being stylish, but for packing a powerful punch.

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Zagg’s ZAGGmate is a Bluetooth keyboard case that sells for $99 and doubles as protective shell for your Apple iPad – essentially turning your Apple tablet into a 10″ touchscreen netbook.  Sure, you could just go buy a MacBook Air and end up with a real computer, but for those of us intertwined in the evolution of mobile device tabletry, we couldn’t have it any other way.  Besides, how are we going to run Angry Birds and all our iOS apps with Mac OSX?

The Design
Molded out of lightweight aluminum, the 86% sized QWERTY keyboard layout (in comparison to Apple’s wireless keyboard) will give you a slightly cramped feeling at first. But don’t fret, it’s easy to adapt to after a punching out a few lines of text.  The keyboard is recessed slightly within the aluminum shell, making for raised areas that come in to contact with the iPad and your thumbs as they rest near the space bar. And a comfortable resting place it is, made of a soft, smooth, dense rubber compound.  This prevents scratching your iPad’s outer bezel, because that’s all that really comes into contact with the ZAGGmate aside from the inner edges.   These inner edges have a thin strip of high-density foam that hugs the sides of your iPad in place – also providing some sort of impact protection, all the while keeping it “locked” in for mobile transportion.

Zagg has added a bonus row of keyboard shortcuts all along the top.  Starting from left to right are the Home (double tab for multi-tasking, sorta like cmd+tab), Spotlight, Photos, Virtual Keyboard and Turn off Display.  Going further along the top are also a tradtional set of multimedia keys we find on all Apple keyboards.  Command, Option and Function keys are situated in their typical places, giving you instant copy/paste capabilities.  Most of the keys are exactly where you would expect them, thankfully no tricks in re-learning a layout with the ZAGGmate. The up and down arrows threw me off on several occasions,  the left/ right arrows are besides the up/down.  Aside from that, you’ll be hammering out keystrokes faster than anyone iPad users.

The Good
The iPad virtual keyboard is restrictive in a sense.  Sure, it adds mobility and can be accessed with a touch, but when large amounts of keystrokes are being inputted – especially the ones on Apple’s second menu – on-screen typing is just a virtual bottleneck.  Addressing the need for an alternative to the virtual keyboard, the iPad ZAGGmate does a very good job. We received a production ready model and its keys are smooth and soft to press.

It couldn’t get any easier. The simplicity of its on/off syncing abilities are really painless.   As soon as you have paired the ZAGGmate with your iPad all it takes is the flick of the switch to bring back instant access.  No delay as I would have imagined.

Protection is prime.  When in “case mode” your iPads display is protected with a solid aluminum plate.  The backside is left bare, but that’s just another plate of aluminum, so if you’re not all freaked out about cosmetics, slap a sticker on there and call it a day.

The Bad
It’s not a netbook.  Ok we know that, it’s the iPad.  So having a keyboard on the iPad could make some people mad. They  may kick, scream and yell things at you, like “go buy a netbook” but in the end, you’ll be typing twice as fast as them, if not more. So is it really a bad thing?

The function + delete key did not not work in notes, typically, combination should delete keystrokes in front of your cursor.

No ability to adjust the angle that your iPad is tilted at.  It will be locked in at roughly 68°, although you do get to switch between landscape and portrait modes.

The Verdict
At $99 its a bit pricey, but this is a really well made keyboard accessory for the iPad that will cater to one specific user; someone who is banging out emails, text and other bits of data on their iPad.  If you  feel the bottleneck of the iOS virtual keyboard like a fuzzy itchy wool Christmas sweater your treehugging Aunt Jen just gave you, then the ZAGGmate is for you.  Typing at those speeds you’ll sooner bust out a T9 cellphone and get it done with.

Like I said, although the iPad’s back is exposed when in case mode, the screen is protected, which is the most important part.  Adding a back to this could have been done, but you would be gaining extra bulk and ruling out your ability to just slip it in a nice sleeve.  As the end user, you will have to decide if the extra battery draw on your iPad while using Bluetooth is worth the increased typing speed you’ll gain with an 86% keyboard. Allthough the ZAGGmate has its own internal battery that runs for “months,” having Bluetooth constantly on your iPad to connect to it will significantly decrease your runtime, if that’s even an issue.  I would have been really impressed if Zagg had a beefier battery pack built in that could simultaneously charge the iPad, but that would have raised the price.  If for some reason you just want the case, sans keyboard, Zagg sells that for $30 less.

So, if on that sunny Saturday afternoon on your trip to the golden Apple store you accidentally purchased an iPad instead of a that MacBook Air, or perhaps that Acer netbook you walked past at Best Buy, here’s your chance to get some QWERTY action back.

Sent from my iPad using the Zagg/mate

[Zagg]

The post ZAGGmate Bluetooth keyboard for iPad reviewed appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The Apple iPad is one of the best media consumption devices out there, allowing you to read e-books, watch videos, and play games. However, the on-screen keyboard can leave something to be desired. At the same time, the tablet device needs a little bit of protection too. The ZAGGMate iPad case does both. Unlike so many other cases that wrap the entirety of the iPad, this one clips on to the front. It’s kind of like some of the cases you may have encountered for the iPhone where they clip onto the back, except this one only protects the front (where the touchscreen is).

When you remove the iPad from the case, you’ll find that the ZAGGMate can also act as a stand, providing a little wedge to prop it up and allow for handsfree video-watching. The kicker is that the inside of the case also rocks a full QWERTY keyboard. It connects to the iPad via Bluetooth and lets you type up your blog posts to your heart’s content.

In addition to the QWERTYness, the keyboard also has dedicated media controls, a home button, brightness controls, and so on. The 510mAh battery inside is rechargeable via USB and should last a couple of weeks at a time.

The keyboard-touting ZAGGMate iPad case isn’t especially cheap at $100, but it’s not way out there either. If all you want is the case and not the keyboard, the $70 version may be more your cup of tea. Either way, you can be reasonably assured of the quality. After all, these are the same folks that make the Invisible Shield.

[Zagg]

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