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Apple rivals waste no time mocking its ugly $99 battery case

Updated Dec 19th, 2018 9:09PM EST

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It’s rare that companies like Asus and BlackBerry have the opportunity to take real shots at Apple, but Apple’s ugly $99 Smart Battery Case has given them just the opening they’ve been waiting for. Let’s check out some of their best burns below.

RELATED: Tim Cook defends Apple’s controversial battery case design

We’ll start off with BlackBerry, the beleaguered former smartphone dynamo that has made a point of developing phones with stronger battery power in recent years, including the BlackBerry Passport and the BlackBerry Priv. Here’s what the company tweeted out this week in the wake of the Smart Battery Case announcement:

Of course, this is one of BlackBerry’s few opportunities to laugh at anyone. The company last quarter recognized revenue on only 800,000 smartphones and even Samsung’s Tizen platform has now surged past BlackBerry in overall market share. It’s a good bet that Apple will sell more of these ugly cases this quarter than BlackBerry will sell phones.

Asus similarly took shots at the need to buy a separate battery pack when its own devices offer terrific battery life on their own:

Ironically, the ugliness of Apple’s new case is actually reminiscent of Asus’s own Padfone smartphone-tablet hybrid devices that similarly feature an unseemly bump in the back:

In fact, that is the most damning thing you can say about the design of the Smart Battery Case: It looks like something Asus would cook up.

And finally, we have LG. While LG isn’t exactly a powerhouse in the smartphone world, it does sell a respectable number of devices and many of its most recent designs are terrific. Here’s what LG had to say about the Smart Battery Case:

Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.