Battery life on Android? You haven’t seen Mugen Extended batteries then

Hope you all must not  have forgotten my posts related to non-touch phones, battery tips and Samsung Galaxy S impressions, while all of them seem unrelated, but there been an easy connection between all of them.

A story of a layman, who was first afraid of going full fledged touch screen and then was haunted by the generation of toothless tigers (what I like to call modern smartphones with inadequate battery).

Not one but many  of earlier Nokia fans turning towards Android nowadays and while there been not many complaints related to productivity but one complaint, you find very common among most of them "Battery life on Android". We talk about 1GHz processors, loads of RAM and flashing animations here and there, but all the talk ends when we end up with a dead junk plastic or metal piece before finishing the day by even half. I know the feeling as passed through the same journey so many times myself.

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Android and Battery

There are obvious reasons that why touch screens are more demanding on battery and same goes for the higher frequency processors. I may share some of tips about the battery saving on Android by adding into some already known tips, but be prepared, nothing comes without some tradeoff like …

• Under-clock your processor and have longer battery life with a little loss in performance.
• Keep the brightness on minimum and have longer battery life with a little loss in sunlight visibility
• Keep the push mails on longer period and have longer battery life with a loss of instantaneous delivery

Question is why one needs to research on all this and why one can’t have everything working as its been on their earlier phones? Smartphone, superphone whatever, .. isn’t 10-12 hours run should be mandatory to be called as a phone? Shouldn’t manufacturers be making more capacity batteries, when they know how much demanding their products might be?

Yes! there is one more option to use Mugen’s Extended Batteries that may really make your device running 100% more than they were running before that too without compromising the power of your device or your habits.

Mugen Batteries

I heard a lot about these batteries and after reading much about them, I was assured that being a leading global brand and expert on this particular area, there is no second thought about the level of trust that we can put upon them. Question was, what they offer, what’s the price and what’s the trade offs?

So first a little about what the Hong Kong based company Mugen Power offers …

They basically offer two kind of products:

1. Replacement battery a high quality battery that has the same size, a bit bigger capacity and lower price then original one
2. Extended battery  a high quality battery that has a several times bigger capacity and respectively bigger volume then the original one

The Extended batteries come along with their own back covers and usually not available for the models, which was shipped with non-removable batteries. All the products pass the quality control and get the CE mark and satisfy the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive( RoHS)

So, after going through all this, I decided to contact @MugenBatteries in reference of their 3200 mAH Extended battery for my Samsung Galaxy S i9000 and the response was extremely positive as they agreed to send a review unit to me (for keep).

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Layman’s Take on Mugen Batteries

While it was a little annoying that the delivery option was Indian Speed Post (I prefer DHL as I can track), I received the packet within 15-20 days after the first email notification about the order. You can have an idea about the size of the parcel from the picture shown above.

 

After opening the safely packed parcel, we were presented with a thick battery, new back cover and also a one page manual.

Honestly speaking, it might be the first time for me when I was reading some battery related manual this much seriously. Anyway, rather than seeing pictures, let’s watch the first look in action…

P.S. Sorry about the light conditions and raw footage of video.

While you can see that how thicker the battery is in itself, let’s see the comparison with some other devices (Nokia N82 and Nokia E6)

If you loved your Samsung Galaxy S for its slimness more then its sure not gonna be an easy watch due to very noticeable thickness (Somewhat like Nokia N900) though considering the ultra slimness of super lightweight Galaxy S, it still very natural to handle the end result.

One may have their own opinions about the new size, but let me mention about some of the advantages of new back cover the original one.

1. Improved texture which is not a finger print magnet now like the original one.
2. Earlier little raised camera glass will now be secured from scratches when you keep it on surface.
3. The raised weight somehow making it more easy to handle 

So this was all about the exteriors, about which I can say that one will take a few hours to get used to, but let me tell you, once got used to, you will find the original size a little lighter side to handle.

Now the question comes about the performance, does the compromise over looks worth paying around $ 97? (you can get a discount as well if you follow MugenBatteries on twitter)

If you are on twitter then you might be hearing about many kind of claims about Battery life of Galaxy S with 1500 mAh battery. For some, it might be a disastrous 6-7 hours only, while some claim it to be more than 15-16 hours. Obviously, there might be a lot of factors like firmware, custom ROMs, lagfixing etc, but at the end, its about you and how you use your device.

My experience says that most of the battery get consumed by the gorgeous SAMOLED screen itself. As much time, the screen is on, the battery drain gonna be on higher side. Though there might be other factors like Network performance, GPS related settings, Email fetching intervals, wrongly coded applications running in background, various launchers or any of the services running in background.

Whatever the reasons of drain might have been, with more than 100 geo-tagged tweets per day, heavy browsing (EDGE/HSPA), many a calls and four email accounts configured, my Samsung Galaxy S was used to have around a max 8-9 hours of battery life (shown above).

And after Mugen Batteries …

Well.. I will again say, its totally about my usages that are sure much much higher than average users, so it might be the case that the above stats might be reachable by others with even 1500 mAh (think what 3200 mAh will do for them), but for me like user it was always a dream. A dream, I was always watching about my smartphones since I used Nokia E72. Yes! the battery life of Galaxy S is finally able to compete with almighty Nokia E72 and even beat the same with loads of extra usages.

Finally, it has started to happen that I leave home for office by 0800 hrs in morning and come back at around 2000 hrs with still 15-20% juice left in my phone even after constantly tweeting, emailing, browsing etc.

Not only that but only this enabled me to use the phone constantly without even a single min standby time for straight 9 hours when I was on a journey of 850km in train, when the connection itself was fluctuating. Same time, having the original battery charged in your bag might be another bonus, if you are planning a trip of like one or two days.

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How do I get one?

As of now, Mugen Batteries could be purchased via their online store only via the limited payment options like PayPal, Moneybookers, WebMoney and Western Union. Once the order is placed and payment made, they ship the product anywhere in the world within 15-20 days normally.

There are multiple ways to contact them like given below:

By email : etradeasiacs(at)gmail.com
By skype: shop.eten.hu
By Twitter @MugenBatteries
By Facebook facebook.com/mugenpowerbatteries
By phone: +852 25981700
Or you can use online contact form

For bloggers affiliate@mugen.hk

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Do I recommend it?

Totally.

You soon forget the extra size and weight increase when you consider the true convenience the battery gives… it represents excellent value for money.

I would say that it will be one of those products that I will 100% recommend myself. I am sure that you never seen such 100% recommendation about any product from my side on this blog till date, but Mugen Batteries (Extended one) are sure a worthy exception as it changes the whole perspective of you about smartphone usages and Android.

Final words … If you are using an Android like Samsung Galaxy S, then its kind of a mistake to not have one of them.