If any of you are familiar with my YouTube Channel you know I am what I would call a minimalist YouTube creator, and by that I mean I film and edit all my YouTube videos on an iPhone with some editing done on an iPad. The reason I chose to be a minimalist creator is purely out of convenience and at the end of the day, the quality is quite good.

Apple last week announced a new accessory for the iPhone XS series and that being a new smart battery case. There is a version for the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR. The price is the same for all 3 models and that is 129 for US customers and 179 for Canadian customers…ouch! Even with the high price tag, I thought that this new battery case would be quite beneficial to me considering I am what I would call a power user, I film YouTube segments every day, I am constantly editing and posting/managing social media so the demand on my battery can be quite substantial. Now really I can not complain about the battery of the iPhone XS Max, most days I can get by without having to recharge or top off, but there are those extra demanding days where I find my battery dead mid-afternoon with quite a bit of work still needed to be done. This Is where this new smart battery case will come in super handy.

Upon receiving my Apple smart battery case earlier this week I was actually surprised at how small it was, now don’t get me wrong this case is massive and it does add a lot of bulk to your phone, but in the photos online it looked bigger than what it turned out to be. Needless to say, this case is definitely not for everyone, it could be quite cumbersome for the casual user. In typical Apple fashion, they don’t really give a lot of specs about the device, Apple tends to present information about user experience, Apple states with the iPhone XS smart battery case you can expect 37 hours of talk time, 20 hours of internet usage and 25 hours of video playback. So really you can expect to get an extra 50% to 70% longer usage out of your phone. The smart battery case as of right now is only available in black and white. As for the design I was quite pleased, the smart battery case is styled similarly to the silicon cases they sell, which I am a big fan of.  With all my iPhone over the past few years, I have always used the Apple brand silicon cases. They fit great and have a nice sleek minimalist look while still offering decent protection.

The new iPhone XS Smart battery case supports wireless charging, so if you have a QI wireless charger it is fully compatible. The case can be charged independently from your phone either by lightning cable or even by just laying it on a wireless charger, There is a tiny LED light on the inside of the case to signify charging. There are many cheaper battery cases available on Amazon, I have never used any third party battery cases so I cannot make any statement to usability or quality, however, one benefit to using the genuine Apple brand is that the Smart battery case integrates nicely into the iPhone operating system. You can get both your iPhone battery level as well as the battery level of the battery case bu swiping from the left as long as you have the battery widget set up.

All in all a nice battery case for the iPhone XS lineup, a bit pricey and a little bulky but perfect for those who have a demanding battery usage.

In this video tutorial, I show you a simple method of how you can easily sync your main timeline video track with b-roll footage. This also works with syncing audio captured separately and you want to sync it with your main timeline video track. Quite often you don’t have to sync your A and B-roll footage as you are just blending in some shots to make your video more engaging. However there are those situations where your b-roll footage needs to line up perfectly, this is especially true when filming a task with 2 cameras so you can cut back and forth for different angles. In this video, I show you step by step with a few tricks on how to achieve this in Lumafusion on your iPad or iPhone.