In the sea of iPhone accessories that is CES 2012, we made sure we took the time to stop by and talk to the good folks from Mophie - makers of such products like the mophie juicepack air and mophie juicepak plus that we reviewed recently.

They walked us through some of their development processes, expectations for battery technology in the future and some ideas of what they're looking forward to coming out of CES 2012. They have some 'disruptive' products upcoming but weren't fully ready to discuss those as of yet -- plenty to look forward to in 2012 from mophie.

We had a chance to take a close look at the Eton Mobius battery case for iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S here at CES 2012. This case not only features an 1800 mAh battery backup system but a solar charging panel on the back as well. Set your phone face down to gain a solar charge.

While Mophie and Incipio also make battery backup cases, Eton is unique in how they designed the case. Instead of having to force your phone into a slide case which may cause damage to the dock, the Mobius case slides to allow easy placement. Once your phone is in the case, snap the dock connector in place.

The Eton Mobius is currently available for $80 USD.

The iPhone, iPad and  iPod touch are pretty much the perfect mobile gaming platform and chances are you might be shopping for someone who just loves their iOS gaming. So what to get them? Luckily, there are lots and lots of gifts for gamers to choose from! Here are a few of my favorites, both for the hottest hardware and greatest games!

Don’t need anything for a gamer? Check out the recommendations anyway, something great might still catch your eye. If not, no worries, check out one of our other 2011 holiday gift guides!

iOS device gifts

Does you gamer in your life not have an iPhone, Pod touch or iPad yet? Not sure which one you should get? Not a problem! Start here:

• iOS device gift guide

Accessory gifts

If your gamer already has their device, there are some great accessories out there to help them take their gaming to another level.

iCade

The iCade is a magical gift for the retro gamer. The iCade arcade cabinet is an accessory for your iPad which turns it into a retro arcade machine complete with joystick, six buttons and a glowing coin slot.

More and more games are being released that work with the iCade; including the Atari's Greatest Hits app. The iCade is designed to work with the iPad and iPad 2.

The iPad slots into the arcade cabinet and the controls are done over Bluetooth. Buying a gamer one of these should keep them happy not just over the holiday period but for the rest of their life too!

• Get iCade at ThinkGeek.com

Fling and Fling Mini

What if you are watching your favorite gamer and they are constantly struggling with their game and can't achieve even the simplest tasks due to their finger and thumb fumblings on the shiny iPhone or iPad touchscreen? Fear not, there is a solution for that too, Ten One Design have come up with a well designed joystick for the iPad and a mini version for the iPhone and iPod touch too. Called the "Fling", it sticks to your screen with some small suction cups and claims to offer a console type gaming experience.

As you control a game with Fling, it pushes gently back towards the center position.  This haptic feedback guides and stabilizes your gameplay, making every action more accurate. Any gamer would love to get their hands on one of these, me included!

• Get Fling and Fling mini at Amazon.com

mophie juice pack plus

It is pointless having the latest games and accessories for your iPhone if the battery on your device is not up to the task. Thankfully we have just the thing to buy for the gamer to keep their iPhone fully charged and ready to play.

The mophie juice pack is a hard shell case which fits the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. Built into the case is a 2000 mAh capacity battery. mophie claims that the juice pack plus will double your iPhone's battery life which gives you double the time to play your favorite games.

The mophie juice pack is the ideal gift for the iPhone gamer, it not only protects your iPhone but also doubles its battery life, a perfect gaming combination!

• Get mophie juice pack plus on store.imore.com

Motorola MOTOROKR S10HD Bluetooth Stereo Headphones

It's a classic story, they love to game, you'd dearly love some peace and quiet. Luckily, there's a gift that can keep on giving to the both of you -- stereo headphones! They get deep base and immersive sound, and the freedom of a cable-free experience, and you get blissful, well deserved silence.

While there are a ton of headphones to choose from, wire and unwired alike, the MOTOROKR looks and sounds great, and has just a touch of that futuristic feel to it.

• Get the Motorola MOTOROKR S10HD Bluetooth Stereo Headphones on store.imore.com

App gifts

What better gift for a gamer than more great games to play? The App Store is chock full of them, and iTunes allows you to gift them straight to your special gamer. (If you're not sure how, here's quick guide to gifting apps)

First person shooter (FPS) games: Modern Combat 3: Fallen Nation

Modern Combat 3: Fallen Nation is the ultimate First Person Shooter for the iOS platform. If you want to treat the gamer in your life with a great game then this may be the one to go for. You can play a solo mission with over 13 different levels each with fantastic graphics and enemy AI.

Modern Combat 3: Fallen Nation also offers a highly polished online multiplayer game experience. You can battle up to twelve players in six maps with seven different modes of play. A word of warning, you can accelerate your gaming abilities in this game via in app purchase of weapons and health kits; some find this an unfair advantage!

It is also a universal binary so this particular game will look stunning on your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

• $6.99 - App Store link

Also check out:

• Dead Space is a gorgeous, terrifying shooter set in the depth of space. $6.99 - App Store link
• N.O.V.A. 2 is the closest thing to HALO on the iPhone. $6.99 - App Store link
• RAGE HD comes from John Carmack and while it's on rails, it's also off the hook. $1.99 - App Store link
• Call of Duty: Zombies is all the undead you can empty a clip at. $4.99 App Store link

Arcade games: Real Racing 2

If the gamer on your gift hit list is into driving games then they don't get any better than Firemint's Real Racing 2. Real Racing 2 lets you take the wheel of 30 officially licensed cars and each has its own characteristics too. You can race against 16 other cars all at the same time.

Real Racing 2 also offers 15 locations to race in with over 40 miles of highly detailed race tracks, speedways and city center circuits. You can also choose to race in the daytime, twilight hours or evening.

If you are lucky enough to own an iPhone 4S or iPad 2 and an Apple TV (Black) you can even play wirelessly on your HDTV. Friends can join in too with split screen multiplayer and Party Play.

• $9.99 - App Store link

Also check out:

• Infinity Blade brings the Epic Unreal 3 engine to iOS. 'Nuff said. $2.99 - App Store link]
• Street Fighter IV Volt puts the classic fighter in the palm of your hands. $0.99 - App Store link
• Extraction: Project Outbreak is a fresh take on the top-down 3D shooter. $0.99 - App Store Link
• Atari's Greatest Hits brings the oldest of old school to your brand new advice. Free - App Store link

Casual Games: Amazing Breaker

Amazing Breaker is a game for the more casual gamer. It involves ice sculptures; you remember them, popular at high class parties but nowhere else. Anyway, the aim of the game is to destroy the ice sculptures with bombs, and try not to leave any shards of ice behind.

Amazing Breaker is a highly addictive puzzle game with over 80 levels to keep you busy. Designed for the Retina display, it offers high resolution graphics, easy to learn game play and Game Center achievements. The bombs you use to destroy the ice sculptures come in many different flavors too with Spike Bombs, Ghost Bombs, Helicopter Bombs and even Split Bombs. The game is a lot of fun and once you start it, you will struggle to put it down. A great gift for the gamer in your life!

• $0.99 - App Store link]

Also check out:

• Catan is a great version of a great strategy game. $4.99 - App Store link
• Words with Friends isn't Scrabble but it is an all out, all online spelling war. $0.99 - App Store link
• Carcassone is a beautiful rendition of the medieval strategy game. $9.99 - App Store link
• Poker by Zynga let's you get your Texus Hold'em on your iPhone. Free - App Store link

More great games for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad

Every day, TiPb covers the best new games and best new game updates, so if you're looking for more great game gift ideas, check out our gaming section! Likewise, the iTunes App Store has a games section with lots of great choices.

• TiPb Games
• iTunes App Store games

And if you're still not sure what to get, consider an iTunes Gift Card, that way the special gamer in your life can pick their very own gift!

• Get iTunes Gift Cards

Your picks?

Remember, you’re part of Team TiPb too, so if you’ve already picked the perfect gift for your iPhone or iPad gamer, or have the perfect idea for one, let us know in comments!

You can never have too much power, so the awesome folks at the TiPb iPhone and iPad Accessory Store are giving away a FREE mophie juicepack air to one of our every-bit-as-awesome members. All you have to do to win is head on over to our iPhone Accessory Forum and tell use why you need all that extra mophie power!

Giveaway starts now and ends Sunday at 12pm PDT. Ready... set... ENTER NOW!

The mophie juicepak plus for iPhone 4 is serious charging power for serious power users. If you're on the go, if your iPhone can't run down, won't run down -- if you need a case that can get you through twice the work and play, then here's your solution. To see how it held up for me under the rigors of CES 2011, read on for the review after the break!

Trade shows are the ultimate test of any battery for me. I'm on the go for 18 hours a day and my iPhone 4 is my lifeline to the world. It keeps me in contact, it lets me help run TiPb, and on top of all of that it lets me shoot all the show video and photos you see here on the site. It's bad enough AT&T hits my iPhone 4 battery like a freight train but the constant usage would run any device down. Enter the mophie juicepak plus.

Hardware

The mophie juicepak plus is all black, all soft-touch, and surprisingly solid. Mophie's done a lot of engineering work to prevent breaks around the cutouts and increase protection and it shows. It is a slider case and there have been some worries about slider cases scratching the glass but I didn't have any problems. (I also wipe down my iPhone before sliding.) Also, it sometimes takes a few, wiggling tries to get the iPhone dock port lined up and properly seated.

There are cutouts for the 3.5mm headset jack, rear camera and flash, and mute switch and extender buttons for sleep and volume. The cutouts are deep due to the size of the juicepak but didn't interfere with usage. The button extenders are well built but if they weren't set just right it would take a few presses to make them work.

The micro-USB charger is at the bottom right. Not using a dock cable to charge means you have to carry a separate micro-USB cable around with you, and doesn't let you use your existing dock-compatible car or video cables while the mophie is on. Understandable given the size of a 30-pin dock port but still annoying at times.

On the handy side there's a series of battery level lights so you can always tell how much of a charge your mophie is packing with the touch of a button

Usage

The juicepack plus is the bigger, badder charging solution in mophie's stable. It weighs more than the juicepak air but it also provides more power. More than double the power. That's twice the talking, twice the surfing, twice the tweeting, twice the recording, twice the watching, and twice the getting stuff done. Phew!

In my CES tests those results weren't just marketing. It's really tough to judge consistently since usage patterns always vary but when I slapped on the juicepak air I could pretty much go as long as I had on the iPhone-only charge. (I carried a juicepak air with me as well -- them were long days!)

When you charge the mophie via micro-USB it passes the charge on to the iPhone as well, so at night you can charge them both without having to plug in multiple charges for each one, or get up and switch.

Conclusion

The mophie juicepak plus ads bulk, no doubt about it. It makes your iPhone 4 bigger and heavier but that's the price of power. And the plus packs a ton of power. If you're away from a charger for a significant period of time the juicepak makes the difference between getting your work done and carrying around a dead brick for the rest of the day. That's an easy tradeoff to make.

Get your mophie juicepak plus for iPhone 4 now from the TiPb iPhone 4 Accessory Store...

Pros

• Convenient case form factor
• Complete re-charge for iPhone
• Pass-through recharge for simultaneous charge
• Solid construction

Cons

• Button extenders can be finicky
• Uses Micro-USB so not compatible with dock accessories
• Big charge means big case

TiPb review rating

Photos

1. Post on the TiPb Forums.
2. Follow @TiPb on Twitter. (Wouldn't hurt to follow our staff as well: @reneritchie, @GeorgiaTiPb, @iChadman, @JFSikora, @llofte, @iMuggle, @andrewwray, @Brian_Tufo, @chrisoldroyd, @farbod_21, @jorjlim)
3. Friend TiPb on Facebook.
4. Subscribe to TiPb on YouTube
5. Comment on TiPb.com blog posts

The more ways you engage, the more chances you have to win. It's just that simple! (See our big contest announcement for all the details)

This week's winner

TiPb Forum poster kch50428 Congrats and enjoy your exclusive Keru full color leather pouch for iPhone (including Verizon iPhone!) courtesy of the TiPb iPhone and iPad accessory store, of course!

Want to be the next winner?

Hurry up and follow, friend, post and subscribe!

Jon from mophie was kind enough to once again give us a tour of their latest, greatest accessories and for 2011 that includes the haptic feedback Pulse gaming peripheral for iPod touch, the 360 degrees of productivity and entertainment courtesy of the Power Station for iPad, and the monstrous charge of the Juice Pack Plus.

TiPb was live on the scene at CES 2011 Unveiled, so check out the video above and the gallery after the break and let us know...

...is this how you want to game and power your iOS devices?

Dieter's at the IFA show in Berlin, Germany and he's scored us a first look at mophie's upcoming juice pack air for iPhone 4. It's got soft touch paint and they claim ZERO signal degredation because the entire PCB board is on the bottom, so there are no electronics around the antenna. It's shipping to Apple now and will be available in "Nationwide retailers" next week for $79.95.

Mophie Juice Pack air for iPhone 4 comes in black, white, red, and green and "virtually doubles your power". 6 hours talk time, 5 hours internet 3G, and 9 hours on wifi courtesy of a 1500mAh battery. It also sports pass-through USB for power, iTunes sync, and can be switched off when not in use.

What Dieter saw was prototype hardware, but felt very thin and good to him, especially the soft touch finish.

Also being shown off was the juice pack power station, which sports 2.1 Amp output so it can power an iPad. This one rates 3600 mAh and has a USB cable included to charge it. And the Marketplace, which we saw an early version of back at Macworld, is now ramped up with Intuit GoPayment and is available now for $179.95 plus GoPayment service.

Hands-on photos after the break!

mophie was a good friend of mine during Macworld 2010 as I literally walked the show floor with two (2!) mophie juice pack airs ($79.95 - iMore Store link) to get me through the near-constant use of my iPhone required for the the live coverage -- and yes, I typically drained them both and then some!

New at Macworld, mophie's Jon Bradley was showing off their mophie Marketplace, which combines a case and a credit card reader to handle transactions on the go and the mophie juice pack TV, which combines a juice pack battery with FLO TV service.

Marketplace will be available April 15 while juice pack TV is shooting for March at a price point probably a bit north of the juice pack by itself, but may include some month of free FLO TV service to offset it.

Check both out after the break and let us know what you think. You want to swipe credit cards and watch TV on your iPhone?

Looks like Mophie, makers of the Juice Pack Air, are going to be offering their own take on the iPhone credit card reader accessory, and software app. We should hear more at CES, but with rumors of Apple offering their EasyPay system beyond the Apple Retail Stores, and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's Square coming to market, next year could be big for mobile money-taking.

Hide your wallets now.

[via TechCrunch]

Entering this contest counts as an entry in TiPb's Birthday Bash grand-prize draw for an Unlocked ColorWare iPhone 3G!

Courtesy of TiPb's iPhone Store, our first accessory give-away is the mophie Juice Pack 3G! Designed to more than double the time you can Rock, Talk, Surf and Send with your iPhone 3G. The Juice Pack is a rechargeable lithium polymer battery in the form of a non-slip, soft grip case. It extends the time that you can use your iPhone 3G in these ways (additional hours):

• Standby Time – Up to 350 hours
• Talk Time – Up to 6 hours on 3G | Up to 12 hours on 2G
• Internet Use – Up to 6 hours on 3G | Up to 7 hours on Wi-Fi
• Audio Playback – Up to 28 hours
• Video Playback – Up to 8 hours

What do you have to do to win one? Simple: tell us why you need one. Get on over to the forums, in the Win a mophie Juice Pack Battery Pack/Case for iPhone 3G thread and tell us what makes your day so long, so intense, so iPhone battery-draining that you need a mophie Juice Pack 3G to help get you through it? Give us your best iPhone Road Warrior story!

• One entry per person
• Contest ends tomorrow, Friday May 8, and 12pm EDT
• Need a real US shipping address to win (no international shipping, sorry!)

Enter the mophie Juice Pack Battery Pack/Case for iPhone, available now at TiPB store for $99.95. Read on for the full review!

First Impressions

The mophie Juice Pack arrives sealed in an entertaining package. It's worth a look and a read, front and back, before opening it up and using the Juice Pack. Conveniently, the Juice Pack arrives fully charged and ready to use. 

The inside part of the sled is a vibrant green rubberized finish, formed to accommodate the original iPhone (sorry, the 3G is incompatible). The rubberized sides are formed in a curve to wrap around the sides of your iPhone to hold it securely in place when your iPhone is seated. The back of the Juice Pack is black with the same rubberized finish, including a handy four-light LED indicator so you can check the power level.

The sides of the Juice Pack have slightly-raised rubber side-rails for an extra-grippy feel so you can hold it securely. A connector is located at the bottom for attaching your iPhone charger. You can charge the Juice Pack with or without the iPhone in place. Additionally, there is a "cutout" to accommodate the camera of your iPhone when the Juice Pack is in place. 

To attach your iPhone, just slide your iPhone in from the top so the bottom connector fits into place, and you are ready to use the power from the Juice Pack.

Performance

The mophie Juice Pack is advertised as doubling your power. The product specifications are as follows:

• Standby Time - Up to additional 250 hours
• Audio Playback - Up to additional 24 hours
• Talk Time - Up to additional 8 hours
• Video Playback - Up to additional 7 hours
• Internet Use - Up to additional 6 hours

Conclusion

If you have an original iPhone and need some extra power on the go, the mophie Juice Pack, available atTiPB Store for $99.95, is an excellent solution for your power needs. It doubles the battery life of your iPhone and helps overcome the lack of a user-replaceable battery. Although the Juice Pack requires removal of your iPhone's case to use and offers only average protection as a case itself, the benefit of doubled battery life outweighs these negatives.

Pros

• Doubled battery life
• Soft-touch finish
• "Smart" - iPhone uses Juice Pack power first

Rating: 4.5 out of 5