by Ted Mc from BlindMind.net, 1 Sept 2010

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One of the most important things for blind and visually impaired persons in terms of mobile phones and the selection thereof is battery life.  Because we use magnification and/or screen readers, a battery that lasts a fully sighted person 2 days may only last us one.

Therefore, this is always one of the first things one should consider about a potential new mobile phone before buying it.  Does it have a sufficient battery?  If not, are there 3rd party batteries available to improve the situation?  Is there another phone with a larger battery that does the same things I like about this phone?  And so on.

My primary handset is a Nokia N97, which, for all the bad press it got shortly after release, serves me well and is generally reliable.  It has high-end media features, and good battery life. 

But human nature being what it is, and even though I already had a spare battery for it, I was quite interested when I saw a relatively low-cost replacement battery that claimed 1900mah, versus the 1500mah in the "stock" battery.  That should equal an additional 22-23% of battery duration.  The cost of the battery, which I bought from a UK dealer on eBay in "new" condition (from a seller who has an amazing 800,000+ positive feedbacks) cost me $22AUD at the time, and arrived in 7 days.  So far so good.

I really wanted to do a proper test that would give me accurate results, so I used the following methodology.

1. First, I fully charged and then ran down my Nokia battery a few times to ensure I was getting best results out of it, as it is common to not get as good of results on batteries that are oftentimes charged when they reach 'low' levels.  You are best to fully charge them and fully run them down when possible, so I did.  This battery is less than a year old.

2. I wanted to create and then recreate like tests that would use up a fully charged battery in the shortest amount of time, but be reliable to affect the second battery tested in the same way.  As such, for instance, I didn't turn on WiFi scanning, as the number of networks found when one battery was installed could by chance vary greatly from when the second was in the phone.  Same with Bluetooth.  So instead, I opened a group of applications (about 8 apps) which take up a certain amount of memory, but do not do any functions on their own in terms of network scanning or internet usage.  I then opened the Video player, and chose 3 long videos, and played them right after another.

3. I timed the duration of battery life on the stock battery to use as a benchmark, and then repeated the test using the 1900mah replacement battery.

The results were quite clear, though can be taken as either good news or bad news, depending on your viewpoint.

The 1500mah and 1900mah batteries performed exactly identical to each other!  Each lasted 4hrs and 15 minutes exactly when tested in an identical environment.  Once I saw the 1500mah genuine Nokia battery got this result, I was obviously expecting the replacement battery to give me about 50-52 minutes of additional duration if the 22-23% higher capacity is to be believed.

How could this possibly be taken as good news?  Well, a) the replacement didn't give any LESS result, and b) it cost less than half the price of an additional genuine Nokia battery.  So, for $20, I didn't get ripped off, b ut also didn't get what was promised either. 

I have written to the dealer who sold it to me to ask their opinion and response, but have not yet had a reply.

On the subject of batteries, for almost any portable device including many different brands of mobile phone, iPods, digital cameras, and so on, there is a company called Mugen who make proper higher-capacity replacement batteries, and have a very good reputation.  Be aware that their batteries come at a much higher cost, though.  Check out their website HERE

Here's a few tips for general better battery performance:

1. Close programs when finished.  Depending on your handset, many times using the 'end call' button to exit a program simply returns you to your homescreen, but leaves the program running in the background, and still using up battery.  Use softkey 2, or whatever is labeled as 'exit' on the application you're looking at. 

2. If you're in the habit of charging your phone every night, try not to.  Get a secone charger and keep it at work.  Try to let your battery run completely flat maybe not all the time, but at least once or twice a week.  You should notice a difference.

3. Don't leave WiFI or Bluetooth running when not using them.  The radio units in a phone are large battery consumers.

4. If you purely use a screen reader to access your phone, and don't require the screen whatsoever, turn down the brightness as much as possible.  Some screen readers even allow you to turn it off altogether.

5. For those applications that you allow to access the internet to update content on a regular basis, such as RSS feeds, and Podcasts, setting a longer delay between checking will definitely save battery.  Set them to manual, or once a day checking for updates, rather than every 4 hours.  Turning off auto-checking of mailboxes will also improve battery life.

It's all a balance between convenience and battery life, so everyone has to find the balance that works best for them.  Hope this article has charged you up!