Wednesday 21 March 2012

Android Extended Battery Review

By Colin Gauntlet-Hayes


Being used to the relatively endless battery lifetime of a BlackBerry, changing to an Google Android came as a bit of a shock; out of the box I was only getting about 8 hours of usage from a 100 % charge. A familiar tale for a lot of men and women I'm sure... After some (well, a couple of weeks) of fine-tuning I was able to reliably get about 36 hours from the battery but it nonetheless meant I had to charge the phone each and every day to be sure I'd not get a flat battery at an crucial time.

I decided it was time we evaluated 1 of the Mugen extended battery packs I'd read about.

I spoke to our pals at MobileFun and asked for the Mugen Power 1800mAh android battery for the Desire S. The following day it arrived in the post, and it was promptly popped out of the product packaging. The first point I noticed was that Mugen recommend the battery be completely charged for a minimum of 12 hours before very first use. It truly is then suggested the battery is allowed to drain completely before recharging once more. This ought to be repeated for the first few charges. At first we thought this was baloney, but on investigating further it's actually to permit the handset to reset it's battery level sensor for the greater 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 each, the initial point noticed was with the Mugen powered telephone, the extended batteries remained at 100% for just over 6 hours where the stock battery had dropped 1 notch immediately after just 4 hours.

Three hours later under very 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 subsequent test was a couple of hrs of video gaming, eventually leaving the stock battery at 12% even though the Mugen was at a healthy 45%.

Lastly we set up the video cameras to record HD video, and right after just 15 more minutes the stock battery gave up the ghost and then the phone died, The Mugen phone nonetheless had 30% of it's capacity left, pretty much precisely what we would expect when thinking of the additional capacity.

Both phones were then charged up once 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 summarize then, the Mugen is about 30% improved below heavy load and about 45% improved under light load; impressive figures indeed, thinking of the low cost of the battery I'm amazed HTC do not fit these as standard.

I cannot recommend Mugen batteries highly enough, primarily if like me you are consistently frustrated by the poor battery life of one's Android device.

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

Why Buy? Extended battery to assure which you must be concerned about your battery less. Between 30% and 45% Extra power than the original battery. You are able to nonetheless preserve the stock battery as a spare for extended trips. Created with Mugen power cells. No battery memory impact.

Why Not Buy? If you are content with day-to-day charging. Should you be a very low use owner.




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