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Why does every comment stupidly concern the least interesting questions about this product? There’s a lot more to it than its price and its appearance, and I haven’t seen a single good question on this forum yet.

How about the power management? Is it like the previous “smart” battery cases that relentlessly forced power into a fully charged phone? Or does it actually turn itself on and off appropriately in an efficient manner?

It appears it’s charging the iPhone constantly however I’m basing that off the iPhones battery icon having the symbol for charging. I’ve been looking into apps for battery and power management to try and see the Cases behavior. Any suggestions are always welcome

it is constantly "charging" but this is the best way to do it when youre dealing with a second battery. Once the internal battery is at 100% the phone essentially switches to the external battery. This means the internal battery is not being used and saves on additional charge cycles.

If you wait until your internal battery is drained to a lower % then you are wasting a charge cycle on the battery since you have to charge the internal battery to 100% before it can run off the external. you also lose out on battery capacity/efficiency since it is very inefficient to charge a battery from a battery.
 
My XS battery case on my original iPhone X survived the 12.1.3 update....
I'd read some speculation that Apple was implementing a software block for the case (since it's not officially supported). If so, it's not activated in 12.1.3 fortunately.
 
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