Seidio 2600mAh extended battery

[windstrings]

I"m not Matt, but I'll say what I think based on what I"ve read and heard.

The battery left app continues to learn.. even after its calibrated and shows "accurate".. if you drastically change your schedule and that schedule will be a permanent change I believe Matt recommended to fully charge and recalibrate for the quickest resolution of what would be considered "accurate".

However if you schedule bounces around routinely... like you say.. heavier on weekends "or days off" verses weekdays, if its calibrated during the week and then you go into heavy use it will be temporarily inaccurate until it has time to learn and average that use into the equation too.

I would guess that routine will cause it to take an average of each day to give you its best guess since it doesn't have intelligence to know when the weekend is coming up.

I would think once the dust finally settled "in 2 - 3 weeks" you would get an average readout that would continue to fine tune itself over time.

Unless I'm wrong and Matt corrects me.... thats my guess.

I personally put the MV reading as my middle primary readout because regardless of what the percentage says, the battery will never die till it falls below 3400mv or so.... that way I'm not surprised and left with a dead battery away from a charger.

The extended Seidio battery is robust enough that as long as you don't try to do heavy use, you will always be good for several hours as long as the mv reading is above 3600mv.... once it drops below that, things get unstable and you still have several hours "maybe 3 - 5 hours" if you are in standby and only occasional use, but heavy use will drop it on down rather quickly.... "maybe 30 min to an hour before dead"

 

[preinvent]

On that subject, I have a question for preinvent! I am calibrating my usage today and yesterday at work. On my days off, my usage is much heavier. Does Battery Left adjust based on schedules that are drastically different, or will the readings simply be inaccurate on the weekends when my usage is heavier. If I understand correctly, the readings are based on time rather than actual battery consumption...but I may be wrong about that?

The readings are based both on time and the system battery level reports. If your schedule changes drastically then it may take a few charge cycles for Battery Left to catch up. The algorithms are designed to take a broad average of your usage and continuously keep an eye on how accurate it is. It adapts over time, but it doesn't keep really old results so depending on how often you charge will probably only keep the last 1-2 weeks or so worth of usage history.

 

[solorca]

Thanks for the info!

Annoyingly, one of my co-workers wanted to see my phone today and accidently rebooted it. Does this mean I should restart the calibration process again after a full charge, or will Battery Left understand that it was simply a reboot and give me an accurate reading? I saw some mention of this above, but I don't know if a definite answer was ever found.

I'm on hour 30 right now since my charge, but the reboot just happened about an hour ago.

 

[preinvent]

No need to recal - Battery Left will continue calibration again when your battery level changes (accuracy will read "READING" whilst it's waiting for this to happen).

 

[solorca]

Great! I get really worried when I'm not sure how much battery life I have, so I was hoping I wouldn't have to do this again for a while.

As annoying as this battery can be, the life on it is nothing short of amazing. It's been running for 37 hours now and is still at 3700mv. I have had about 5 hours of display time, watched about an hour of Youtube, listened to quite a bit of streaming radio, and played probably at least thirty minutes of Homerun 3D Baseball, which is quite draining on the battery. Getting this thing to fully drain is going to be quite a chore.

I used to have an extended battery on my LG EnV Touch and I was lucky to get this much time on it even with barely any use. Something like using the internet for 5 minutes was enough to significantly lower it's power.

One thing I've found about it however, and I think it's been mentioned before, if you don't get a full charge on it, it isn't nearly as great. I charged it for about 5 hours one day this weekend and I only got about 8-9 hours of usage out of it. I was a little worried about the battery, but now I see that it was just a case of it not being fully charged.

 

[windstrings]

Seems like the bulk of the capacity is realized between 3700mv and 4000mv.... above that, is a fairly fast drop and below that is also a fair fast drop.... I'm guessing 70% of the capacity runs roughly between those two parameters.

No exact science here..just an opinion.

 

[solorca]

Seems like the bulk of the capacity is realized between 3700mv and 4000mv.... above that, is a fairly fast drop and below that is also a fair fast drop.... I'm guessing 70% of the capacity runs roughly between those two parameters.

No exact science here..just an opinion.

That seems consistent with what I've seen. I can usually drop under 4000 in a few hours, and after going under 3700 I don't seem to have a lot of time left.

I'm still calibrating. I'm at 3616mv after 48 hours...so I think I'm finally starting to get down to the end of the battery life. I've actually used it a fair amount compared to a normal work week, because I've made quite a few phone calls, totaling over 2 hours since it's been off the charger.

 

[windstrings]

If your still up and running... maybe you could jot down what your usage is... you should be bumping 50 hours by this post..... it sounds like your close.

 

[solorca]

If your still up and running... maybe you could jot down what your usage is... you should be bumping 50 hours by this post..... it sounds like your close.

Here is my best estimation of my usage for the 51 hours I've currently been up. Unfortunately I had a phone reboot about 24 hours ago, so I am going by memory to estimate that part (I had checked it a few minutes before the reboot though, so it should be accurate). I'm at 4505mv right now, so I give it another hour or two before it dies, as long as I don't use it too much.

I'm rooted, so I can't list specific programs because of the way it lists them...but here's what I'm showing...

Voice Calls - 1:32
Display - 5:03
Phone Idle/Cell Standby - 40:15
Android System - 0:42
Mediaserver - 1:30

That's about 48 hours. So I would assume about 3 extra hours of assorted programs like games, browsing, market, etc.

It wasn't exactly extreme usage, but it's above average during workdays for me. It's especially nice to consider that I can use 6 1/2 hours of phone/display alone and still have power. I would have been dead well before that with the OEM battery.

All this really shows me is that it will be almost impossible for me to kill this battery over the course of a single day, regardless of how much I use it...which is really the only thing I wanted out of an extended battery.

For the record, I have auto-sync, wireless, and gps off because I don't use them on a regular basis. I am most likely going to switch auto-sync on (along with Juice Defender) after the recharge to see if it affects my battery in any way. Again, as long as I can get a full day's juice I'll be happy. Anything else is just peace of mind.


As for Battery Left, how often are you updating the widget? I have mine set to 5 minutes, but I am considering making it real-time. If you have tried that, how much does that affect your battery life?

 

[solorca]

My battery finally died at 54 hours of usage. I only have about 5 hours to charge it before I will need to take it off the charger, so I hope that it doesn't harm the calibration efforts of the phone if it doesn't get all the way back to a full charge. I know that it shouldn't do that under normal circumstances, so hopefully the fact that I just calibrated shouldn't bother it.

 

[windstrings]

Ive had to do that too..... just charge it full next chance you get and let it run down again and don't worry about the inbetween use.

 

[Rollingbones]

OKay, this doesn't make any sense. I gave the phone a full charge last night after a complete draining from a full charge. I unplugged it this morning 15.5 hours ago. The phone says I have 60%, the battery info from Battery Left battery info says my battery level is 60%//3793 mV, but the widget reads 39%.
So what's up with that???

 

[aaf709]

I haven't gotten the battery yet, but I have a question. I'm used to keeping the Droid in a horizontal velcro-closed holster. If I get the extended battery, the phone won't fit. To those who are using holsters, what do you recommend?

 

[Rollingbones]

If you get the case with clip holster at the Verizon store, you can modify the case to accomodate the extended battery. I met someone who bought the battery and cut out the back of the case. The new battery door is made of the same material as the case and since the phone slides into the case with the screen facing inward, it'll work. Thus far this is the only one I've heard of.

 

[forsaken]

i did that too lol, i also bought the seidio innocase for the extended battery. i just discovered last night that the holster from the shell and holster combo will work with the innocase