Samsung Galaxy Note – Mugen extended battery review

You get a phone, you use your phone, you start to use your phone a lot more as you slowly realise what it is capable of, you then start to carry a charger around with you every day to charge up your new wonder phone. Your battery just doesn’t quite make it to the end of the day, an all too familiar scenario for many I imagine.

Nowadays we use our phones for a lot, personally I use mine for Social Media, Multi Media, Navigation, Fitness, Photos, News, posting articles here, Emails, SMS and once or twice a year I will make a call with it. Any phone I have ever had, has made it to the end of the day on a single charge, that is until I got a Galaxy Note. The stock battery on the Galaxy Note is large anyway at 2500 mAh. With my usage I would just about get to early evening before I needed to swap batteries or plug my phone in. There are many methods to prolong battery life, I always feel like you have to compromise somewhere along the line though, such as using your phone less or using 2g instead of 3g.

One option to prolong battery life is to get an extended battery. Mugen Power have kindly sent us a 5400mAh battery and a back panel for the Galaxy Note. So I thought I would do some real life tests to show quite how long the battery would last for.

Charge 1

I say charge 1 but this was probably the five or sixth charge. Mugen Power recommend you do a an initial charge cycle to calbrate the battery. The following charges are once the battery has reached it’s optimum level.

After the initial charge cycle (near total discharge and complete charging 3-4 times) the battery reached it’s normal level. Below shows 33 and a half hours in total. To get the most out of my phones I turn them off at night. So this first charge basically got me through two entire days plus a few in the next day without having to plug it back in. The screen on time of 6hr 45 is the amount of time I used the phone for over those days. Basically this was just Twitter and Web Browsing, by this point I was impressed with the battery.

Charge 2

The next charge brought slightly better life, I got a few more hours life and screen on time. I have noticed that if you use the phone for extended periods the battery does seem to lose power at a faster rate, I guess this is as the battery heats up it loses power quicker. I’m still impressed with the battery.

Charge 3

This day the phone seemed to have a bad day. The total of 15hr will have been one day, from an early start to a late ish end. Complete with the usual web browsing and Twitter. This really emphasises my previous point about keeping the screen on and using it.

Charge 4

Back to normal times today. Total screen on time was up and the overall time wasn’t too low. The total time was down it died just after five pm which means I will have basically had two working days out of it.

Charge 5

Screen on time here has reduced the overall life. The battery really does perform well, there was a strange spike in battery life with this cycle. But overall discharge was steady.

Charge 6

The battery seems to be levelling out at about 26 hours average usage for me. Bear in mind that my usage is heavy, most of the day I have my Note in hand doing something or other. If you were a normal person who used your Note like a normal person would then you could easily get into a third day. I have noticed that my Mobile network signal seems to drop out during the day as well which probably accounts for some discharge. As the phone has to search for the next signal.

Here are some photos of the battery, the back panel and my Galaxy Note.

Conclusion

Overall the battery is great, having that extra power pack handy is always reassuring, knowing you have a couple of days worth of charge is perfect. The only one slight problem is that this battery does make an already huge phone that little bit bigger. Any aspirations for wearing skinny jeans need to be got rid off asap.

The battery and many other extended are available at Mugen Power – Galaxy Note 5400mAh battery product page the current is cost £55.75 inc worldwide shipping. This is not much higher than two normal rated batteries plus you get a back panel with kickstand.