Droid Battery/Charger reviews

| Tuesday, March 9, 2010
I have tried so many different batteries and chargers for the Droid that I thought I should share with everyone what I have found to be worthwhile or not. Sometimes it's really tempting to go the cheap route, and sometimes that pays off, and sometimes it doesn't.

One thing to understand about the Droid charger is, it is 850mA and 5v. You can pretty much use any charger to charge your Droid but anything less than 850mah is going to charge slower and 1000mA (1 amp) is going to charge faster. Going to 1000 is not going to fry the phone, because the phone only draws as much power as it needs.

Where you run into some issues is some chargers are poorly made and so the charge jumps around. I haven't found this to damage my phone in the least bit, but it might make it difficult to type or something while having it plugged in.

1. Non-OEM battery. Example from eBay

I bought a battery like this, not really expecting much for 4 bucks. And I pretty much got what I paid for. It isn't that it doesn't work at all, but it only lasts maybe 4 or 5 hours with moderate use.

You can tell a non-OEM/OEM battery from an OEM battery because the OEM battery has Motorola written across the top of it. See picture below:

image

In addition I bought an OEM battery for 20 dollars shipped on eBay, with no issues. Both of the batteries you see above are from eBay, and the OEM one works just as well as the one that came with the phone.


2. Cheap car/home charger. Example from eBay

I got these from eBay and they work perfect. Like I said above, 1000mA isn't going to fry your phone per se, only the quality of the actual charger. And I haven't had any issues with these. Great replacement chargers and only cost a few bucks. Since it's 1000mA instead of 850, it charges quicker than the stock as well.

3. Slim wall charger. Example eBay auction

This thing is a life saver for me. Toss the battery in, plug it into the wall (it's pretty small and easy to travel with), and bam you can charge a battery without having to have your phone plugged in. So as soon as a battery is done you can swap it out. Before I was charging a battery to full in the phone then charging a second battery to full in the phone. Way too much time plugged into a charger!

This charger is only going to be as good as the cable you use to charge it. I use a 1 amp (1000mA) charger from the review above. See picture below:

image

3 comments:

lewjeff said...

The Motorola OEM car charger's cord isn't long enough for me. My available outlet is near the floor under the center console. I can't find an extension cord. Do you know of Droid car charger with a long cord or how to get an extension cord?

J said...

Not really. The one I have stretches a decent amount but the problem is the driver is sitting on the left (obviously) and the connection is on the left of the phone so the phone always feels like it's being pulled away from your ear.

Anonymous said...

Best thing to do is NOT use the phone while it is plugged in and charging in the car without a headset. Constantly tugging on the phones charging port can cause it to wear out prematurely.

To the original poster..this is a good post however there are NO images that are still available. Flickr is a garbage and your photo is down..all of those ebay auctions are now invalid. Maybe go through and replace the images with ones that will stick around. Try a different hosting service that won't pull your images down. I use imageshack.us but i am sure there are other free ones that actually leave your photos alone.

Otherwise, this could be very helpful.

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