Results from Battery Monitor Widget Pro after 150% cycle on OEM and Gold with a wipe batt stats in between:
I have about half of the parts in for the battery tester that I am building so I might have it done this week to compare results, but initial results are looking good so far IMO.
I tried to stay up last night to run the gold battery down to 1% but the thing just would not quit. I got 10 years into cafe nippon, into the second box in cut the rope, the second world in angry birds space, started up a few games with randoms in draw something all between testing the two batteries. Last night my brother in law played with it for about two hours and it was still at nearly 70%.
EDIT: Bought from seller
voguestage88 on ebay for those interested.
Bring some results to back this up or let the issue rest. Maybe quality control becomes more difficult when aiming for this capacity in this form factor, or maybe Samsung just got a much better bid from whoever is making the OEM battery, who knows and who cares?
Just because OEM is a certain capacity does not mean that it is the maximum potential for the form factor. I work on my own vehicles and build my own computers and I know for certain that you can get the same or better quality parts than familiar name brand for less money, so why is it so difficult to believe that the same could be true for mobile phone batteries? If Samsung is hiring out a third party to produce the OEM battery, then it makes sense that there is a bit of a markup as opposed to getting a battery direct from a supplier.
When you are talking about 2 million plus notes that have been sent to retailers now, that extra $2-4 per battery would add up to an additional $4-8 million cut out of samsung's profits...and I am pretty sure most of us would agree that the OEM battery is pretty great so they didn't come off as ripping us off even though a better battery might be available.