When I got my first TYLT mobile battery a couple years ago, I thought it was a stylish and clever design, but didn’t hold a lot of juice. The company has come a long way, and now offers a full line of mobile power accessories for smartphones, tablets, and any other tiny battery-sucking devices you carry around.

Powered slide-on case & powered sleeve for iPhone 5, iPhone 5s & Galaxy S4

As a photographer, I rely on my smartphone for way more than making phone calls. Google Earth helps me scout locations, Maps, CoPilot and Orux get me where I need to go, TPE helps show me the light (literally), Tide tables are essential for coastal work, and the list goes on. But all that power comes at the price of battery life. Spare batteries are an option for some phones, but back covers are increasingly annoying to remove, and fiddling with changing batteries is no fun.

Enter Tylt’s very cool powered phone sleeve – the Tylt Energy sliding case. I have one for my Galaxy S4 (a phone I really, really like, by the way – although it is pretty big and power hungry). The cover comes in two parts. The “thin” piece is a typical skin-type cover for the rear and sides of the phone, which gives it some protection against dropping and of course prevents scratches to the sides and back. It has two small grooves on the sides that allow the larger, thicker portion of the cover – that contains a battery about the same capacity as the one in the phone – to slide on.

I leave the skin cover on my S4 all the time (it is actually even more sleek than the skin cover I was using previously), and leave the battery cover in my day pack or camera bag for the most part. But if I’m on a long day, it’s easy enough to slide the battery on and recharge the phone. Sometimes I’ll do that when I don’t need to use the phone much, so it is again fully charged when I need it. Or of course you can attach the battery-powered cover and use it that way – although it is thicker and heavier than normal.

When you first get the battery cover, it may be a little hard to slide off. I was a bit worried about it, and even used some Silicone spray on the rails, but as Tylt assured me when I asked, after a few iterations the process gets easier. I guess I’d rather have it be too tight than too loose and fall off.

Tylt sells battery covers for the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s and for the Galaxy S4.

Tylt PowerPlant Energy Cell

Battery covers aren’t for everyone. First of all, they are only good for one device, so if you want a general purpose spare power supply, they don’t do the trick. And they can be a little fiddly to get on and off. Fortunately, Tylt also offers a slick general purpose rechargeable battery pack that will work for phones, tablets, or other small devices.

The Tylt Powerplant is a 5200 mAh rectangular shaped unit that is charged through a standard microUSB port. In turn it has a USB port where you can plug your charging cable, and also includes a hidden microUSB cable you can use if  you don’t have one handy. A set of green LEDs let you know how much charge it has. That’s all there is to it. It is painless to use, and in my field testing has always worked flawlessly. It’s a bit bulky for a pants or shirt pocket (unless you have cargo pockets), but fits easily in the corner of a camera bag, daypack, or briefcase. For Apple users, Tylt also makes a Powerplant version with a built-in 30-pin cable.

Super-powered Tylt Vu wireless charger

While not really an “on the go” issue, I do love wireless charging. My S4 didn’t come from the factory with that capability, but fortunately there are after market charger antennas that slip on top of the battery and under the cover. The only problem is that most of the inexpensive charging stations on the market only have one coil. That means you need to place your phone down fairly exactly, and if it gets knocked a little it may stop charging. There are few electronic snafus worse than grabbing your phone in the morning to find it dead. The Tylt Vu has 3 charging coils, so I can confidently place my phone on it knowing that it will faithfully charge and be ready for the next day’s work.

There are plenty of after market charging and power options on the market, and many of them work great. What I like about Tylt is their attention to quality, design and detail in the devices they bring to market. They aren’t the cheapest, but I rely on my electronics in a lot of remote locations around the world, so I really want things to work and stay working when I need them. In that sense, the Tylt power accessories have worked very well for me.