The saying goes "You get what you pay for". That is certainly true most of the time. But when I saw a super cheap extended battery for the Galaxy Nexus, I couldn't resist. In fact, I bought 2 just in case they worked better than I expected. So after receiving my 3800mAh extended battery, am I still feeling like I got a good deal?
Since the release of the Galaxy Nexus the biggest complaint I have with it (maybe the only one) is the horrid battery life. I see people lying talking all of the time on the XDA forums about how they get 20 hours on their stock battery with moderate use. If they are really using
it moderately throughout the day they are not getting more than 10-12 hours on a charge. If they are getting that much then they really are not using it moderately but more like it is sitting idle most of the day. The other reason would be that they are turning off the antennas and what good is that?
it moderately throughout the day they are not getting more than 10-12 hours on a charge. If they are getting that much then they really are not using it moderately but more like it is sitting idle most of the day. The other reason would be that they are turning off the antennas and what good is that?
I have had as little as 2.5 hours on my 2100mAh CDMA extended battery and as much as 16 hours. I would say it averages 6 hours. Obviously that is not sufficient. Fortunately, I am able to charge my phone throughout the day in most cases. There are rare times when I am not near my chargers and I need to be able to make it 8-10 hours on a charge. The Samsung extended battery is just not a good option for me.
This no name replacement battery is a 3.7V 3800mAh lithium-ion battery. It is about double the thickness of the stock or extended Samsung batteries. It does require a special back cover and yes it is ugly. However, I had a 2700mAh Momax extended battery for the Vibrant that was also ugly but it gave me 18-24 hours with extremely heavy use. I could live with an ugly workhorse battery. So far I am not sure if this battery is the workhorse I had hoped for. I see many people say they don't think the looks are worth a few extra hours of battery life. Obviously, those hipsters people do not care about what is important when carrying a smartphone....using it.
I will say in just the few days I have been using this battery I have seen the battery life just slightly increase. I know that many of the aftermarket China produced batteries do not deliver the amount of battery life they claim. My hope was that even if it could give me a realistic 2800mAh performance of battery life that I still would gain another 4-6 hours. That would be plenty to get me through my day. However, so far I have been seeing far less than the 18+ hours that the Momax battery gave me.
The first day with a full charge I went 10 hours before the phone completely died. I would consider the usage that day light to moderate. I didn't watch videos or listen to music. I did use navigational directions and the screen stayed on for 30 minutes for that. Other than normal emails and texting it was a below average usage day. It was the first full charge and discharge of the battery so I can forgive it for that. The next day was a heavier usage day. I watched video for almost 2 hours. The screen was on more and the general usage was much heavier. I was not on wifi all day. I had it die after 6.5 hours. The third day I charged the phone since I needed to use it unplugged that evening. The performance was hard to determine due to the up and down fluctuations in charging. The next day it was at 60% after 8 hours. That was with the screen on checking emails but still connected to wifi most of the time. I also set a live wallpaper background to push it even further.
I have found that being on a solid wifi connection all day increases my battery life by as much as 4 hours. Days when I am in a 3G or limited coverage area I have found it will decrease my battery life by the same amount. I have been trying to replicate those types of days with the new battery to see if I can compare. If I am not near a wifi connection and I turn off wifi completely I still see a significant drop in performance. The LTE connectivity is both a blessing and a curse. It is great to get the noticeably faster speeds but at the cost of shorter battery life, I am not positive that I need fast Internet on my phone that bad.
I had to find a way to test by taking the signaling out of the equation. I set the phone in airplane mode and played videos. The screen was on steady for the whole test and no background services were getting data. The new battery lasted for 5 hours and 15 minutes. The 2100mAh battery running the same test ran for 4 hours and 30 minutes. Obviously the extended battery does not provide nearly the 3800mAh that it claims.
For a total of $26 for two batteries shipped I will likely be able to get through a long day on my phone under normal to heavy use. If I could charge both batteries, I could easily last throughout the day. I wonder if a portable charger would be a better solution. I see 6000mAh and even 11200mAh chargers for reasonable prices. Those would offer you the ability to use a smaller battery while still being able to keep your phone charged. However, the one advantage of the 3800mAh batteries are that they definitely charge up faster than the Samsung battery. Knowing they all will die rather quickly, I think that the charge up time may be as important as the charge down factor.
What are your thoughts on batteries? Do you care what it looks like if it performs or are you more concerned with keeping your phone's waistline down to a minimum? (if you are in this camp, sorry about that hipster comment) Sound off below.
No comments:
Post a Comment