Extended battery or cheap replacement battery

[dboy225]

Try fully charging (24 hours with the phone off). Then running it down to near empty and charging it again. I was amazed at how much better it was. Before, two hours playing with it it would be 80% or lower. Now, it is still close to 100%!!

I was under the impression that you could not turn the phone off. If it's plugged in, it's on.

Anyway, I think it still takes a few cycles to get things going, but that might be an old wives tale. I picked up a spare battery from verizon for like 40 bucks, and a wall charger for just the battery. This was the same setup I had on my storm and it works very well, no more worrying about it.

$40 seems pretty steep to me for a battery. I usually get batteries on ebay and they seem to last just as long as the oem.

From what I've found, Seidio is the only way to go if you want an Extended Battery. It's not too bulky and offers twice the capacity, but naturally takes longer to charge. Seidio also offers an Extended Battery Hard Case, so you don't have to sacrifice protection.

Now I have a question...after purchasing the Extended Battery, I noticed that my droid seems to think it is my original battery. My charge lasts roughly twice as long, but at 5% batt.life. I know that this is a misreading as no droid lasts 6 hours at 5% while streaming data, playing music, and navigating LOL!

Any way to reset the memory of batt. life? I know the batt. itself has no memory but my droid sure does. Need to know what my batt. life REALLY is

 

[phatneff]

Yes, the battery life may not be as long as some other phones, but it's not like you're lacking time to charge it. You have your wall, your car, and most importantly the way that people seem to always overlook is YOUR COMPUTER!! While you're typing away on this message board, or at work, or playing on Facebook, you could have your phone plugged into the USB port of your computer. The stock charger that comes with the phone is conveniently a wall and USB charger.

 

[dboy225]

droid thinks my extended battery is the original! false readings

Still didn't get a clear answer...everybody knows the basics of charging your phone, and most everybody runs some kind of task manager...I need to know how to make my droid realize that I've doubled its battery capacity....lately my batt. level has been at 5% all night because my droid seems to be used to needing a charge then. I KNOW it isn't really 5% because of all the apps/data I'm streaming just to try and kill it.

Here's what I've been used to..

Factory battery: 1 day on full charge
Extended battery: 2 days on full charge (however, the battery % went down as if it was the original battery...I've never know what my real % is since I got the Ex.Batt.)

What do I need to do to reset the battery level to recognize my new battery?

 

[must_i_register]

I bought one of these Motorola brand battery chargers - it is very small and charges the spare battery via USB or MicroUSB. Got some Motorola batteries for cheap off e-bay. The writing is in Chinese but I don't read my batteries often.

I've only had to use a spare battery twice in the 3+ months I've been Droided. The spare battery life seems OK.

Oddly, today I went from 60% to 5% in under 10 minutes & that was with the OEM battery. Not sure why but it was early in the day & I charge it every night. It was strange.

 

[phatneff]

Oddly, today I went from 60% to 5% in under 10 minutes & that was with the OEM battery. Not sure why but it was early in the day & I charge it every night. It was strange.

Funny you should say that because mine did the same thing 2 days ago. As soon as I plugged it in, it went up to 80%. I wrote it off as a fluke.

 

[olbab]

Re extended bat. 'gas guage' error:
!. If the Droid has an its own built-in voltmeter, and the extended bat. has a different chemistry, the resulting 'percent left' is likely grossly in error.
2. If the Droid calculates drain with a current meter, it can't make a good prediction of 'percent left' unless it knows the extended bat's AH capacity. A number somewhere in the OS ROM, in that case...

Ol' Bab, was an engineer once.

 

[baltman480]

Droid X extra batteries

You can get 2 batteries and a wall charger for $12.95 with free shipping on e-bay. They are made in China, but so is the original Motorola battery!

 

[bluefire7002]

You can get 2 batteries and a wall charger for $12.95 with free shipping on e-bay. They are made in China, but so is the original Motorola battery!

Link to that deal?? dancedroid

 

[startracker64]

What I have done to extend my droids battery, (Original Battery) is turn everything off (Bluetooth, Wifi, Sync, GPS) from the Power Control Widget. This seems to save power to the battery. With all these things off the battery lasts 2 days at least. I don't use these features everyday so I shut them all off. Turn them on when you use them, I also have backup batteries just in case, bought them from Ebay at a real good Price. They come out of China but they work.

 

[thespecialistccc]

It's the charging for 24 hours not the draining of the battery

Lithium ion batterys prefer not to be run dry and do not have a memory like ni cad that most are thinking of.

I am sharing more speculation than scientific fact here, but...

I am under the impression that Batteries whom resist charging after they are drained are typicically charged for long periods of time on a low amperage or "trickle" charge. We do this with car batteries. If you need to charge the battery, but dont have all night, u can set it to 10 amps and have the car battery charged in 2-4 hours. U can also set it to 2 amps and charge it overnight. This overnight charge is apparently charging the car battery more fully than the quick charge does.

Under those same principles, it seems like anyone who charged their phone for a full 24 hour period (whether it was on or off, completely dead, or half charged) will get the best possible results with their phone battery.

So, In a nutshell, I think it's the charging the batter for 24 hours that is helping, and how much you drain the battery is irrelevant, or even making it harder for your phone battery to recharge.

Back on topic tho:
We are in need of a better phone battery solution. Our company is using multiple Motorola droids, and the battery just won't cut it if you are using multiple features throughout the workday. (The whole freakin reason we are using these smart phones, right?!)

So, rather than having employees switching between 3 batteries each, we are hoping to find and extended battery that can atleast replace 2 standard batteries. How would one find such a battery? (if it's even made/possible?)

The Specialist

 

[tranz]

Yes "thespecialistccc" there are options for you, but not if you don't read.

1- Read this entire thread, and a wikipedia article or 2, this will give you an understanding of what you're dealing with.
2- The Seidio extended battery is available, and is precisely what it claims to be: a larger (higher capacity) battery.
3- configure the Droids to conserve power, and have the users operate their Droids by turning things like Bluetooth, GPS, WiFi, ringer volume, vibrate, on when NEEDED, and OFF otherwise, and adjusting brightness, or using auto-adjust brightness etc.

I won't waste space here explaining charge / discharge characteristics of the available batteries, but I'll point-out that the phones manage the charge and discharge of the batteries (and in such a manner that they will NOT damage the batteries).

 

[tranz]

experience with replacement batteries

OK, so now many of us have had our Droids for several months, and learned a lot about them (and don't even go to these forums much anymore). My original battery has reached the point where it's performance is dropping noticeably, and I'm not ready to ditch the whole phone. I'm looking for others insights on their own experiences with batteries.

Anybody use the 2800 Seidio battery and like it, or dislike it? I know it ain't cheap. Does it work on a Droid2 reasonably well?

How about the 1500mAh Seidio?

Is the OEM rated 1500mAh or 1400mAh (or something else)? Mine doesn't say.

Anybody using an external battery pack with a micro-USB connection?

 

[zr1fan09]

It amazes me how poeple say every smartphone has bad battery life... compared to what? a regular phone.. well yeah, all regular phones do is make calls and text.

It's like saying a Corvette has bad gas mileage... compared to what? a Prius?... compare Oranges to Oranges, the Droid has average battery life for a smartphone.

That being said, your always suppose to drain your battery 100% on its 1st usage. So when you get the phone, kill the battery and then charge it up completely.. it will hold a charge longer, charge faster and have a longer life.

So i am not trying to be a dick but corvettes actually get pretty good gas mileage lol

 

[phonetool]

I just got my Droid 1 a couple weeks ago and it's not yet activated on a plan- just playing with it on wifi and setting things up.

I bought a 2800mAh battery on Amazon for $30 and I'm playing with Battery Left Widget to calibrate the useful life of the battery.
The first charge/discharge cycle was on the Verizon supplied 2.2.2 and the battery lasted more than 5 complete days before *I* gave in to it's whining at 0% (it had been there all day) and charged it up again. It never hit rock bottom and shut off, but I don't like to do that to Li-ions.
This week I've rooted, put on CM7 RC4, and overclocked with ChevyNo1's low voltage 1GHz kernel (and SetCPU- 1GHz on demand).
I haven't yet reached the bottom of the battery. Battery Left Widget is having trouble calibrating and is often conflicted with the system estimation. I expect it will take a few full cycles to get a good calibration. If each cycle takes a week, though, that'll be a while before I can share some real data.
Also, remember that this phone is not on the network, so true battery life is yet to be determined.

I also found an extra-capacity battery on my favorite Hong Kong import site- dealextreme.com
Current price for the 3.5Ah battery with cover is $11.90
a855 - DealExtreme
(gamble if it's actually that rating, gamble if the cover is any good)

So far, I'm really liking the fat battery. I've always hated having to plug in every night and always gone to big batteries when my phone couldn't last two days.
That said, I'm SOL on fitting the phone into the stock car mount as well as the stock desk dock. The Seidio stuff might fit, but I really don't want to spend that kind of money.
I might get the desk dock off Amazon ($14) and dremmel out the back area. That solution doesn't work for the Moto car mount, though.

Anyways, there's my $0.02 delivered.

 

[henry3]

High quality battery cells deliver better and last longer but its hard to find out who is producing high quality cells. Going with Motorola cells would be the best bet for now until reviews come out on other "cheaper" batteries