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Accessories My $3.19 Ebay battery from China results.

kbohip

Well-Known Member
Jul 14, 2010
154
16
A few weeks ago I decided to buy a battery, from China, off Ebay, for $3.19....delivered. Needless to say I wasn't expecting much. What I got was so much more though.

The battery came in, I charged it up (in my spiffy new .99c charger from Ebay) put it in my phone and turned it on. An hour or two later I went to bed and left the phone on all night. I awoke to find it still had 92% left. I used the phone during the day to check e-mails and make/receive a couple of calls. I don't try to conserve power in any way. I have the brightness set as high as it will go, wifi, bluetooth, and even gps were left on all day. I run a live wallpaper (City at night) and my screen timeout is 2 minutes. I even used the color flashlight app for a good 15 minutes tonight at the zoo.

So here I sit 26+ hours later and the battery is still at 28%. To say that I'm happy with my $3.19 battery is an understatement. I'm going to leave the phone on again tonight to see just how long I can get with this battery.:)
 
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The battery just died at 37 hours. That's the longest I've ever had the phone on for without recharging. The stock battery should last about the same time as this one did, but I've always plugged it in to charge every night. Needless to say though I'm quite happy with the performance of this cheap battery. For $3.19, it's worth having as a spare in case you ever need it.
 
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The battery just died at 37 hours. That's the longest I've ever had the phone on for without recharging. The stock battery should last about the same time as this one did, but I've always plugged it in to charge every night. Needless to say though I'm quite happy with the performance of this cheap battery. For $3.19, it's worth having as a spare in case you ever need it.

Thanks a lot for posting this. Im ordering 2.

:D
 
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The battery just died at 37 hours. That's the longest I've ever had the phone on for without recharging. The stock battery should last about the same time as this one did, but I've always plugged it in to charge every night. Needless to say though I'm quite happy with the performance of this cheap battery. For $3.19, it's worth having as a spare in case you ever need it.


Thats pretty damn good. I have one of those i got for $3.27 but it didnt last near as long and would die really fast once it got to 30%. It only lasted 8.5 hours. He is sending me another though but even my TWO OEM's didnt last near as long as yours do.
Must be my phone because i dont have my brightness up to even 25% , turn off wifi and GPS and i wasnt getting near even 20 hours. Im still testing my new OEM and tomorrow will be the best test but my original only got 13 hours at best with how i used it and would do better than that if i turned off 3G but you know i dont want to be stuck on EDGE.
 
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The battery just died at 37 hours. That's the longest I've ever had the phone on for without recharging. The stock battery should last about the same time as this one did, but I've always plugged it in to charge every night. Needless to say though I'm quite happy with the performance of this cheap battery. For $3.19, it's worth having as a spare in case you ever need it.

Seriously? Sounds too good to be true, but for the price and free shipping I'm willing to give it a shot. Ordered two.
 
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Seriously? Sounds too good to be true, but for the price and free shipping I'm willing to give it a shot. Ordered two.

I'm not exaggerating. I saw that it was at 5% and 37 hours, went upstairs to take a shower and when I came back down I got my camera and was going to take a picture of it but the phone had already shut off. Keep in mind I didn't use my phone very heavy over those 37 hours. I wasn't using apps like Google Earth or any battery killers like that other than the color flashlight app at the zoo last night. I used that one for a good 15 minutes at full brightness though. I also didn't have any long phone calls during those 37 hours either, just smaller 2-3 minute calls. I do run live wallpaper and I always keep my screen brightness to 100% though, as well as a 2 minute timeout for the screen.

From what I can see so far, this battery is at least as good as the stock Samsung one, and it should be as it's rated at 1500mah as well. It says Samsung on the battery and it "appears" to be a stock battery, but I'd be amazed if it was for this kind of money. I probably wont use it much as my stock battery has always easily gone 16 hours for me anyway. Still, this will be nice to have if I'm away from a power outlet for a longer time or I'm using Maps without having it plugged in, etc.

Btw, the battery took 2 weeks to come in from China, so don't worry if it takes longer than usual to get it.
 
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I'm going to go ahead and order one or two for my Captivate - at this price, why not? I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it WERE to come from the same factory as the OEM batteries - the Chinese factories are notorious for doing extra production runs and dumping them in the grey market to make a quick buck. Batteries, like most of the crap we buy, are actually very cheap to manufacture.
 
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Can you post the link for the $.99 charger?

Well heck...I hadn't heard about that. I did find this one...
1
BATTERY +Charger T-Mobile Samsung Vibrant T959 Galaxy S - eBay (item 260656400623 end time Aug-29-10 19:42:03 PDT)

Oh...shipping is $10...just saw that.
 
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I was refering to kbohip's comment about that .99c charger. Hopefully he/she will post a link! ;)

This is not the same seller I bought mine from, but if the picture is correct then it is the same exact charger. This charger is slower than charging the battery in the phone though so keep that in mind. I haven't timed it yet but I know it takes well in excess of 3 hours to charge a completely dead battery. Also, I don't recommend using the usb port on the bottom to plug the phone into. My touchscreen acted strange while plugged in so I measured the voltage only to find that it was 5.62 volts. It should be right at 5 volts.
1

USB desktop Battery Charger for Samsung i9000 Galaxy S - eBay (item 160471506652 end time Sep-20-10 17:05:41 PDT)

Also keep in mind that there are sellers from China that package these chargers together with a battery or two. I saw some for $10-15. It ended up being cheaper to go with two $3.19 batteries and the charger from different sellers though.
 
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This is not the same seller I bought mine from, but if the picture is correct then it is the same exact charger. This charger is slower than charging the battery in the phone though so keep that in mind. I haven't timed it yet but I know it takes well in excess of 3 hours to charge a completely dead battery. Also, I don't recommend using the usb port on the bottom to plug the phone into. My touchscreen acted strange while plugged in so I measured the voltage only to find that it was 5.62 volts. It should be right at 5 volts.
1

USB desktop Battery Charger for Samsung i9000 Galaxy S - eBay (item 160471506652 end time Sep-20-10 17:05:41 PDT)

Also keep in mind that there are sellers from China that package these chargers together with a battery or two. I saw some for $10-15. It ended up being cheaper to go with two $3.19 batteries and the charger from different sellers though.


Thanks!
 
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I too am expecting my chinese batteries in the mail, but I have on thing to ask the OP...

...Do you suffer from chronic sleepwalking-and-plugging-your-phone-in-at-night syndrome? :)

No possible way the Galaxy S can get 37 hours on one single charge using a battery that produces 1500mAh, with GPS/BT/WiFi on the entire time and that much playing around with it. I used to design battery packs (like these ones) for Sanyo, MicroPower, etc, and it's just not possible considering the power evacuation rate caused by this device, not even taking into consideration the extra drain induced by WiFi and GPS. Fact is, there is a rather large difference in quality between the components that Samsung uses compared to these cheapos (components such as resistors, thermistors, even nickel plated tabs), and I don't think they should be used as primary power sources. Backup for 2 or 3 hours should be fine until the OEM can be charged up, but not primary (due to possible safety problems). I would hate for 20 people reading this thread to purchase these on false pretenses to use as primarys, and have one of them eventually damage their device or possibly worse (you can damage your device by steadily feeding it incorrect voltage, amperage, etc). Obviously I'm not saying this will happen, but it's a situation that we just don't know what will happen.

I would recommend to use these as backup devices, but nothing more than that.
 
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I too am expecting my chinese batteries in the mail, but I have on thing to ask the OP...

...Do you suffer from chronic sleepwalking-and-plugging-your-phone-in-at-night syndrome? :)

No possible way the Galaxy S can get 37 hours on one single charge using a battery that produces 1500mAh, with GPS/BT/WiFi on the entire time and that much playing around with it. I used to design battery packs (like these ones) for Sanyo, MicroPower, etc, and it's just not possible considering the power evacuation rate caused by this device, not even taking into consideration the extra drain induced by WiFi and GPS. Fact is, there is a rather large difference in quality between the components that Samsung uses compared to these cheapos (components such as resistors, thermistors, even nickel plated tabs), and I don't think they should be used as primary power sources. Backup for 2 or 3 hours should be fine until the OEM can be charged up, but not primary (due to possible safety problems). I would hate for 20 people reading this thread to purchase these on false pretenses to use as primarys, and have one of them eventually damage their device or possibly worse (you can damage your device by steadily feeding it incorrect voltage, amperage, etc). Obviously I'm not saying this will happen, but it's a situation that we just don't know what will happen.

I would recommend to use these as backup devices, but nothing more than that.

Understood. I've already considered such things. Thanks for elaborating. :)
 
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This is not the same seller I bought mine from, but if the picture is correct then it is the same exact charger. This charger is slower than charging the battery in the phone though so keep that in mind. I haven't timed it yet but I know it takes well in excess of 3 hours to charge a completely dead battery. Also, I don't recommend using the usb port on the bottom to plug the phone into. My touchscreen acted strange while plugged in so I measured the voltage only to find that it was 5.62 volts. It should be right at 5 volts.
1

USB desktop Battery Charger for Samsung i9000 Galaxy S - eBay (item 160471506652 end time Sep-20-10 17:05:41 PDT)

Also keep in mind that there are sellers from China that package these chargers together with a battery or two. I saw some for $10-15. It ended up being cheaper to go with two $3.19 batteries and the charger from different sellers though.

Thank you for posting. Ordered up 2 of the chargers :)
 
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I too am expecting my chinese batteries in the mail, but I have on thing to ask the OP...

...Do you suffer from chronic sleepwalking-and-plugging-your-phone-in-at-night syndrome? :)

No possible way the Galaxy S can get 37 hours on one single charge using a battery that produces 1500mAh, with GPS/BT/WiFi on the entire time and that much playing around with it. I used to design battery packs (like these ones) for Sanyo, MicroPower, etc, and it's just not possible considering the power evacuation rate caused by this device, not even taking into consideration the extra drain induced by WiFi and GPS. Fact is, there is a rather large difference in quality between the components that Samsung uses compared to these cheapos (components such as resistors, thermistors, even nickel plated tabs), and I don't think they should be used as primary power sources. Backup for 2 or 3 hours should be fine until the OEM can be charged up, but not primary (due to possible safety problems). I would hate for 20 people reading this thread to purchase these on false pretenses to use as primarys, and have one of them eventually damage their device or possibly worse (you can damage your device by steadily feeding it incorrect voltage, amperage, etc). Obviously I'm not saying this will happen, but it's a situation that we just don't know what will happen.

I would recommend to use these as backup devices, but nothing more than that.

Thanks for the info howie. It's nice to hear from someone who knows the in's and out's of these batteries. I too was very surprised that the phone went for a full 37 hours. As I said before though, the phone was not used heavily during that time, and of course at night while I was sleeping the phone was obviously not drawing much from the battery. I get excellent battery life even with the stock battery, but like I posted above, I've never left it on all day and all night like I did with the Ebay battery.

If I understand you right, you're thinking this battery is putting out more than the specified 1500mah's due the fact my went for 37 hours before dying? Hey, it cost just over $3.00 including shipping all the way from China. Who knows what this thing is really putting out! I can tell you that the voltage (according to the battery meter on the phone) was right in line with the stock Samsung battery though. I also agree with you that the Ebay battery should be used as a backup instead of using it instead of the Samsung battery. This is what I bought mine for.

Tomorrow I'm going to see how long the fully charged Samsung battery goes for. I'm interested to see after the results I got from the Ebay battery.
 
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Tomorrow I'm going to see how long the fully charged Samsung battery goes for. I'm interested to see after the results I got from the Ebay battery.

Sounds good, please do post your results with some sort of a log showing the options enabled and use of the phone. If you can then do the same with your $3.00 battery (try to re-create the same results you got before, the 37 hours) and post a log with that as well, it would be very helpful.
 
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