Do Extended Batteries Work?

| Tuesday, March 20, 2012
By Lucy Wallis


Being used to the seemingly endless battery lifetime of the BlackBerry, switching to a Google Android came as a bit of a jolt; out of the box I was only getting around 8 hrs of usage from a complete charge. A common report for a whole lot of men and women I'm sure... Immediately after some (well, a couple of weeks) of adjusting I was able to reliably get about 36 hours out of the phone however it nonetheless meant I needed to charge the telephone every day to make sure I would not get a flat battery at an essential time.

I decided it was time we evaluated one of the Mugen extended batteries I had learned about.

I spoke to our pals at MobileFun and asked for the Mugen Power 1800mAh android battery for the Desire S. The very next day it arrived in the post, and it was easily popped out of the product packaging. The first thing I noticed was that Mugen suggest the battery be completely charged for no less than 12 hours ahead of initial use. It truly is then suggested the battery is allowed to drain totally prior to recharging again. This really should be repeated for the initial few charges. At first we thought this was baloney, but on investigating further it's really to allow the handset to reset it's battery level sensor for the higher capacity battery.

On first charge re-charge (soon after the initial 12 hour charge), it seemed to take *ages* for the telephone to tell me the battery was full. Subsequent charges having said that seem to be significantly quicker (about 90 minutes compared to nearly three hours at initial). This really is apparently rather typical and is just the phone performing an overcharge for a brand new battery.

Right after several full cycles, we decided the time had come to test the battery with some instances comparing it to a Desire S with a stock battery.

Both phones were reset with new email accounts and twitter feeds, each had been set to identical notification update times. They were as closely as possible *identical* to each other with just the batteries becoming distinct.

Performing identical tasks on them both, the very first thing noticed was with the Mugen powered telephone, the extended batteries remained at 100% for just more than 6 hours where the stock battery had dropped one notch right after just four hours.

3 hours later under fairly high load (both phones streaming from Spotify over a WiFi connection) The stock telephone had dropped to 50% where the Mugen was still at 80%.

The next test was a couple of hrs of video gaming, eventually leaving the stock battery at 12% whilst the Mugen was at a healthy 45%.

Lastly we set up the video cameras to record HD video, and after just 15 extra minutes the stock battery gave up the ghost and the telephone died, The Mugen phone nonetheless had 30% of it's battery left, almost precisely what we would expect considering the extra capacity.

Both phones were then charged up again for a stand by test.

Under very light use, along with no WiFi or GPRS and notifications set to hourly, the stock battery managed a acceptable 38 hours ahead of the telephone went into emergency mode, the Mugen however held up for a very usable 52 hours ahead of emergency mode!

To sum up then, the Mugen is about 30% better under heavy load and about 45% improved below light load; impressive figures indeed, thinking about the low price of the battery I'm surprised HTC don't fit these as default.

I cannot suggest Mugen batteries high enough, specially if like me you are constantly frustrated by the poor battery life of your Android device.

Characteristics: Capacity - 1800 mAh Exceeds all OEM batteries. Lithium Ion technology. 1 year warranty.

Why Acquire? Extended battery to ensure that you need to be concerned about your battery less. Among 30% and 45% More power than the original battery. You'll be able to still maintain the stock battery as a spare for extended trips. Made with Mugen power cells. No battery memory effect.

Why Not Buy? If you're pleased with daily charging. Should you be an extremely low use owner.




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