Droid Battery/Charger reviews

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:



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:

AppAware

This app is amazing! It allows you to Tweet what apps you have installed and uninstalled for your Droid and see others' app installs/uninstalls to give you app ideas!

How on Earth have I been missing out on this app for so long! Go check it out, it's free on the Market!

Discover New Android Applications With AppAware
By Frank McPherson on Feb 22, 2010 08:14 PM

One of the knocks against the Android Market is that it is difficult to discover new applications. The Market lists Featured Applications on the top page, but beyond that you have to start drilling down through a list of application categories to see a list of the top paid and top free applications. AppAware is a program that lists the Android applications that have been installed in the last several minutes, and shows the top applications installed in the last hour, day, and week.

After you start the program you see a list of applications that have been recently installed by AppAware users who are contributing to the stream of information. Application names are displayed in blue, green, and red. Blue applications have more installations than removals, red applications have more removals than installations, and green applications have about the same installations and removals. If you tap the application name, a screen displays showing the details behind the colors, and you also see a button that you can tap to open the application in the Android Market.

If you chose to, you can have AppAware post Twitter notifications about your application activities. You will need to configure AppAware to login to Twitter in order for this to happen, and the feature can be turned off. The application monitors all activity with the Android Market and will tweet those changes even if AppAware is not running, so be sure to turn off this feature if you don't want this activity broadcasted on Twitter. For an example of what is shown on Twitter run a Twitter search on #AppAware.

You should also be aware that your Market activity is also sent to AppAware, which is how it displays on the application's main screen. The information is published on the application's web site and published in an RSS feed. If you do not want to share your activity with AppAware, you can turn off your contributions in the program settings, but doing so means your activity will not count in AppAware's rankings.

On AppAware's home screen you can tap a button to list the Top Applications installed, updated, and removed in the last hour, day, and week. For example, by running the application I have learned that the top installed application this week is DroidBooster, which is a benchmarking application to test improvements of Java optimization by the developer. Not surprisingly, DroidBooster is also the most removed application since it is the type of application you try a few times and then remove.

Some people may not be comfortable with the social networking and information sharing features of AppAware, but fortunately the application provides easy ways for turning the features off. I have found the program provides an interesting way to discover new Android applications, so for now it will remain on my T-Mobile myTouch 3G. However, my Twitter followers will be happy to know that after a brief bit of experimentation I turned off the Twitter notification feature of the application

http://www.mediabistro.com/mobilecontenttoday/android/discover_new_android_applications_with_appaware_152853.asp?c=rss