Editor’s Note: Aditya Sengupta is a friend and a well wisher of the OnlyGizmos team. In fact he is as much an integral part of the team as any other member and the man behind the coverage and interviews at the IIT Techfest throughout these years. An alumni of coveted institutes like IITB and VJTI, his knowledge and passion for technology is difficult to match. Here in this article he discusses the battery power (or rather lack of it) in today’s smartphones and shares with us one of the ways we can overcome it. Hope you all enjoy the post!
One of the ironic aspects about owning a smartphone today is the fact that one often has to keep the smarter features turned off or that one has to be fairly judicious about using these features for fear of discharging the battery too soon. As a power user, I could barely get between 10 and 14 hours of use on my Nexus One before completely discharging my battery. Of course,- this tends to be a pain- since this would require me to take my charger along everywhere, search for charging points and suchlike.
More often than not, my phone would be rendered entirely useless by the end of the day. Unless, of course, I’d conserve power by not using the phone much, or by turning off various features. Which is against the whole point of owning a “smart” phone. This is particularly annoying when one is covering events, traveling, or generally going to be away from a charging point for an extended period of time. I mean, it’s sort of pointless owning a smartphone if the phone won’t last a reasonable trip outside for a couple of hours.
The mental overhead of dealing with these issues started getting very annoying. That’s around the time when my friend Sathyajith announced his experience with an extended battery on Twitter. I decided to try one.
A couple of weeks later, I had a shiny new 3200mAh Mugen Power extended battery for the Nexus One on my desk. The rated capacity of this is about 2.3 times the rated capacity of the original battery that the Nexus One ships with (1400mAh). The package ships with a set of instructions on how you should use the battery for the first couple of charge-discharge cycles- instructions that are fairly easy to follow and don’t require you to do anything special beyond the first few days.
The battery also comes with a replacement back-panel door for the phone. Since the extended battery is more than twice the capacity of the original battery, it also happens to be about twice its thickness. The appearance of the phone with the replacement panel makes the phone look somewhat unseemly- the joke going around these days is the fact that the phone is pregnant now- given that the panel is only raised along the surface where the battery protrudes, unlike alternatives where the entire back-panel is raised.
My first impression, while setting up the extended battery on the phone, is that the fit of the replacement panel is not as snug as I would have liked. There is an ever-so-slight displacement between the edge of the panel and the main phone body which initially gives you the heebie-jeebies about that the panel might snap off. The panel has an ominous feel about it each time it is added to or removed from the phone. The bit of the panel that loops around the headphone jack aperture has already snapped off, but this does not take anything away from its usability. The awkward fit also makes it slightly harder to press the wake/power button on the phone. Although you do get accustomed to this over time (the displacement is less than a millimeter, at the worst point), I do wish this wasn’t something I’d have to worry about in the first place.
Notwithstanding the unseemly appearance and the slightly awkward fit, the improvement it has brought to the grip of the phone has come as an unexpected delight. The original phone has this distinctive feel that makes you believe that you are about to drop the phone. The replacement panel introduces curves in just the right places to ensure that your grip is much, much more reassuring. This is particularly useful when you’re holding the phone such that it’s inverted- with the screen facing downward (anybody use a phone in bed?). The better grip helps speed up typing too, natch.
I particularly like the way how the added weight hits the sweet-spot in my palm, making the phone feel somewhat more stable, but this is an issue of personal taste. I have heard back from some folks who do not like the added weight. Another, thing that could perhaps be attributed to the additional weight, the key-press vibrations are slightly muffled. You notice this only when you are changing between the two batteries, but once you’ve been using the extended battery for a short while, you get completely used to it and do not think about it. (This is not necessarily a bad thing- the converse is that you tend to feel that the key-press vibrations are somewhat excessive with the original battery).
The panel comes with the required crevices for the camera, the flash, the speaker, the headphone jack and the power button. Unlike the original panel, these crevices (with the exception of the headphone jack) are not covered with a film of plastic to keep dust out, so this can become an issue in dusty cities like Mumbai- requiring you to open it up and clean it once in a while. On the other hand, now, there is a willingness to leave the phone lying flat on its back, where earlier, I’d OCD about the camera getting dirty (since now, the camera crevice is no longer flush with the surface).
The added battery life works as advertised and expected. The extended battery more than doubles the battery life of the phone. This takes away much of the mental anguish associated with using an underpowered cellphone. At this point- the phone gives me between 1 and 1.5 days of heavy usage, as a true smartphone should. I still keep the old battery with me as a backup, but I’m happy to see that I’ve not had to face a circumstance yet that has required me to use it.
All said, I believe the extended battery pack is a very worthwhile investment. It also helps that the Mugen team is very proactive, and quick to answer questions (and they ship for free to India).
Once you begin using this, you wonder how you ever managed to use your phone without one.
