[Mogul, XV6800 Accessories] themirthfulswami:
Hi all,

Just wanted to share my experience with people who may be considering an extended battery for their 6800. I recently decided to take the plunge on the super-extended battery after ditching my home phone and going cell only. Between the email checking, web surfing, texting and phone calling, the stock battery wasn't even lasting a day before crapping out. I attribute some of that to the fact that I have very weak signal in my office so often times while at work my data connection will drop and reconnect.

So early this past week my battery arrived. Install was cake as expected, though the battery door doesn't fit perfectly. It is just slightly raised in the middle.. hardly noticeable, but there. Seems like the hole for the white camera flash LED isn't quite big enough to fit around the element, too. I was initially worried about the extended backing being an annoyance, but after a week of heavy use, I've found the phone is MORE comfortable to hold, albeit slightly heavier (which I've never minded at all). With the battery on, it feels to be about the same weight as my old Treo 650 (god I HATED that phone LOL).

Ok so here are my typical settings :

Bluetooth : Off

Wifi : Off

GPS : Can't use it yet.. to chicken to install custom ROM :)

Email : 2 accounts, one set to check for mail every 15 mins, the other every 4 hours.

Backlight : 60%

Auto-Off : 2 minutes (screen and sleep mode)

Data Connection : 24/7

Software Running Full-Time : SPB Mobile Shell 2.1, SPB Diary today plugin, VITO SMS-Chat, Personalizer

I am a very heavy text and picture mail user and do a fair bit of web-surfing. Voice usage is light to moderate.

This past Thursday evening I decided to try to see how long it stretched from full charge to zero. I plugged the phone in to the wall charger and charged it up to 100% (around 6pm). With my normal usage pattern, and without plugging it into a PC to sync (so no short recharges), I was at 30% by 10pm on Saturday night. In an effort to kill it so I could recharge overnight, I used media player to loop a few full-screen WMV videos as well as turning on Bluetooth and WiFi. The bastard was resilient, though. At midnight, I still had 5% charge and "very low battery" warnings. To kill it the rest of the way, I surfed around the web for a bit.. it officially keeled over at 12:23am.

So my first official test of the super-extended battery netted me approximately 54.5 hours of "normal" usage with the afore listed settings which includes a couple hardcore hours of me making an effort to take it from 30% to zero. Having not intentionally killed it, I'm sure it would have lasted much longer.

In conclusion, I'm extremely pleased with the Seidio 3500mAh battery. It certainly delivers on it's promises. Thankfully I've never been bothered by a bulky or slightly heavy phone, so the extra weight isn't a factor for me. If anyone is on the fence about buying one, I would say go for it. If you're a heavy phone user you will really appreciate the extra juice :)

Oh yeah, one more thing, the extended battery does stick out enough to make the phone ALMOST too big for my leather bag/case thing. It was a universal leatherette belt-pouch with the magnetic click locks on it. The phone still fits but it's a super tight squeeze so I whipped out my much-loathed VZW rubberized holster for the time being. I have a Seidio spring loaded holster on order, hopefully it will be here tomorrow or Tuesday.