Yoobao 2400mah battery review! Updated with more data, Get Learned up on Batteries!

I know this is a long read, please bare with me, as I not only am reviewing the Yoobao battery but also, providing some information on batteries in general and how the G1 battery works (read post 11).

A few days ago I got a Yoobao 2400MAH battery on ebay for $25 shipped. Here's my little review so far after a few days of use.

Background: I'm an avid RC flyer. I own electric powered and gas powered planes and have done a lot of work with Lipo and Li-ion batteries and have applied the same things I've learned from there to any and all batteries.

Few things I've learned is never let a battery drain to it's bare minimum. I've read numerous times that one should let the battery die all the way and charge it all the way and let it die again. For Lipo and Li-On, 80-90% drain is ideal before recharging again. I'll continue with this later. This does not apply to the G1 though, just a general pointer. Read post 11 to see why this does not apply to G1.

Now on to the battery.

The battery comes with the the extended cover. Which has a nice rubbery feel to it.

The battery came with the charge at 70%, which is nominal for shipping and storage. i got it and plugged it in and charged to to max. I then used it through out the day and right off the bat, it was performing wonderfully. By the end of the day, I still had 60% power left, when normally, I would have drained the stock battery by now. I did not charge the battery that night (Monday night) and by morning still have 50% charge. I charged it when it was down to about 15%, a full charge took about 2.2 hours. Which sounds about right, assuming the wall charger was providing 1Amp constant, the 2.2 hours of charge time equates to about 2200Mah of charge.

From a full charge, I've watched a 2 hour long movie, gtalked, SMSed and it has drained about 40% (60% remaining).

It is typically offering twice the length then my stock battery was, Though I've had it 3 days, I will continually update this thread.

i do have the tools and equipment to measure the charge this batter takes in So I will do that tonight and report my findings. I plan to drain the battery to 15% and charge with my digital charger and see how many MAH it takes in. I expect it to take in minimum 2000mah at 85% discharge.

So far, I give it a thumbs up especially at $25.

My brother has the seido 2600. I will test that as well.

Pointers:
Conditioning the Li-on battery by draining it to 0% and recharging and then draining to 0% is rather harmful to the battery. Lipo and Li-on cells do like going below 3.0-3.2V. The Nominal Voltage of the cell is 3.7V, a fully charged cell is at 4.2V-4.25V or so. Dropping it below 3.0V cause more harm to the battery then good. (Again this does not apply to G1)

Try to avoid draining the battery all the way if you are not able to charge it. Most phones have a cut off point, and my guess is for the G1 battery, it's 3.2V, or I hope it is (actually, it's 3.5V as you will read about it in post 11). But you use the phone to where it cuts of, and are not able to charge the batter for a few days, then that could drop the voltage to below 3.0 (over time). I've seen people do this when they use multiple batteries, and end up killing all of them because they let them sit while fully discharged. Big no no with Li-ons.

LI-on doesn't suffer from memory loss , charge them whenever possible. They do how ever become uncalibrated. Meaning if you constantly plug it in at random discharges (which is perfectly fine), the state of charge may differ from the actual charge gauge. Simple problem to resolve, Drain the battery too 3.2V ( I will post if draining the battery on the g1 to 0% is 3.2V or not) and fully recharge.


More numbers on the Yoobao, Seido and stock batter later.

Sorry about that, I totally overlooked the accessories section . I was wondering why no one was replying lol.

Anyways, I still can't do the test because I'm waiting for the battery to die! I charged it yesterday morning, Since then I have turned t he brightness at 75%, been using it at the gym, browsing the web, and was on the phone yesterday for atleast 2 hours and was on gtalk last night for a about an hour. Then left the phone on all last night (though in standby).
I do have wi-fi and GPS OFF as I don't use it, it is working 3G.

Currently I'm at 46% so Still waiting for the thing to go down to 15%. Maybe I can finally drain it down today and test it tonight.

Alright so Last night I finally got the battery down to 9%. I've got some interesting findings.
Few more things I'd like to point out before presenting some numbers.

Background on battery ratings: Batteries are rated in mAH aka Milliamp Hour, or how much power/charge a battery will hold. How is this measured? I won't go into details so will just give a run down version of it. Batteries are rated from their lower cutt-off voltage to the maximum voltage. The lower cut-off voltage for Li-ion and Li-po is 3.0-3.2V (3.2V being ideal).

The mAH rating is the amount of charge that it took to take the battery from 3.2V to 4.2V. In the Li-ion case, the lower cutt-off is 3.2V, the Nominal voltage is 3.7V and the maximum voltage is 4.2. Anything under 3.2V is over draining and anything over 4.2 is overcharging.

Why do I bring up the above? to give you an idea of how these batteries get rated.
Often companies will rate their batteries from a lower cut-off point to have HIGHER CAPACITY RATING. For example, if I Charge a li-ion cell from 3.0V to 4.2V, it will take in extra capacity as opposed to if I charge it from 3.2V to 4.2v, It just looks good on paper and spec sheet. This happens often. same with AA rechargeables, the lower cutt-off range is usually 1.0V but often companies will rate from .9V to achieve higher numbers. You will never see this disclosed on the battery, you'll just see the rating. (It will never say Capacity 1800mAH from .9v) etc.

Again, what's the point? There are a couple of points.

1) The G1 NEVER drains the battery down to 3.2V. It's cut-off point is surprisingly 3.5V. I do not know the specifics, perhaps the G1 cannot operate below 3.5V.
This means that even though the phone is dead, the battery still has some juice in it, just not enough to power the G1 or it may be enough to power the G1 but the power management of G1 is not allowing it.
The stock G1 battery which is rated at 1150 mAH, is only being used down to 3.5V, which means you're only using ABOUT 800-900 mAH of it's capacity before phone shuts off.

2) This Yoobao battery is surprisingly, very well rated. At 9 % power, It was still reading 3.6V. REMEMBER: that's 9% till the 3.5V cut off. The battery was most likely rated at 2400mAH from 3.2V! When I hooked it up to my li-ion charger, I was able to push in roughly 2000mAH. so In other words I rate this battery 2000mAH from 3.6V. Yoobao rated it 2400mAH from likely 3.2V. And I would conclude that the rating is accurate and not over inflated.


CONCLUSION: You will never use the full capacity of the battery just because of the way the G1 is designed. It will always cut off at 3.5V. The good thing about this is you will never over drain your battery, so you can run your G1 to the dead point as many times as you want as you will never go below 3.5V. Nice feature but I'd rather have it go down to 3.2 so I can squeeze that extra power out of the battery (Wonder if this could be software modified).


TWO THUMBS UP!!! to YOOBAO 2400mAH battery. Priced at $25.

Some rough numbers:
Stock 1150mAH : 850-950 useable mAH
2400mAH: 2000-2100 useable mAH
2600mAH: ASSUMED 2200-2350 usebale mAH as I have not test my brothers seido yet.


Any questions, I'm happy to answer them.

*I'm in no way shape or form related to the manufacturer of any batteries, I'm just a regular consumer who bought the extended battery and decided to review it since it's rather a new product.

Some pictures as requested. I would save the two pictures where I'm holding the phone with both hands and just go back and forth on those two just to get a idea of how thicker it got.

lucky 69 said:

are you still going to test the 2600 battery still or not ? thanks let me know

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I will try to get my hands on my brothers battery, he has the 2600. I will have to give him mine. He's deaf and has to have an extended battery so I will do the swap when I see him this week.