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 the time had come we evaluated one of the Mugen extended battery packs I had read about.
I spoke to our pals at MobileFun and asked for the Mugen Power 1800mAh android battery for the Desire S. The next day it arrived in the post, and it was easily popped out from the packaging. The initial point I noticed was that Mugen recommend the battery be fully charged for no less than 12 hours just before initial use. It is then advised the battery is allowed to drain totally just before recharging again. This really should be repeated for the first few charges. At first we believed this was baloney, but on investigating further it is in fact to permit the handset to reset it's battery level indicator for the greater capacity battery.
On very first charge re-charge (immediately after the initial 12 hour charge), it seemed to take *ages* for the telephone to tell me the battery was full. Subsequent charges nevertheless appear to be considerably quicker (about 90 minutes compared to nearly 3 hours at 1st). This can be apparently rather typical and is just the telephone performing an overcharge for a new battery.
Soon after a couple of full cycles, we decided it was time to test the battery with some times comparing it to a Desire S having a stock battery pack.
Both phones were reset with new email accounts and twitter feeds, each had been set to identical notification update periods. They had been as closely as attainable *identical* to each other with just the batteries becoming different.
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 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%.
Finally we set up the video cameras to record HD video, and after just 15 more minutes the stock battery gave up the ghost and the phone died, The Mugen phone still had 30% of it's capacity left, pretty much exactly what we would expect when thinking of the extra capacity.
Both phones were then recharged up once more 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 are content with day-to-day charging. Should you be a very low use owner.
I decided the time had come we evaluated one of the Mugen extended battery packs I had read about.
I spoke to our pals at MobileFun and asked for the Mugen Power 1800mAh android battery for the Desire S. The next day it arrived in the post, and it was easily popped out from the packaging. The initial point I noticed was that Mugen recommend the battery be fully charged for no less than 12 hours just before initial use. It is then advised the battery is allowed to drain totally just before recharging again. This really should be repeated for the first few charges. At first we believed this was baloney, but on investigating further it is in fact to permit the handset to reset it's battery level indicator for the greater capacity battery.
On very first charge re-charge (immediately after the initial 12 hour charge), it seemed to take *ages* for the telephone to tell me the battery was full. Subsequent charges nevertheless appear to be considerably quicker (about 90 minutes compared to nearly 3 hours at 1st). This can be apparently rather typical and is just the telephone performing an overcharge for a new battery.
Soon after a couple of full cycles, we decided it was time to test the battery with some times comparing it to a Desire S having a stock battery pack.
Both phones were reset with new email accounts and twitter feeds, each had been set to identical notification update periods. They had been as closely as attainable *identical* to each other with just the batteries becoming different.
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 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%.
Finally we set up the video cameras to record HD video, and after just 15 more minutes the stock battery gave up the ghost and the phone died, The Mugen phone still had 30% of it's capacity left, pretty much exactly what we would expect when thinking of the extra capacity.
Both phones were then recharged up once more 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 are content with day-to-day charging. Should you be a very low use owner.
About the Author:
Discover more about extended batteries and moreways to boost your android battery you should check out the Purple Toad website.. Also published at Do Extended Batteries Work?.
