Review: Kanex High Capacity Battery for the T-Mobile G1

After using the G1 for about three months, I came to one conclusion.  The battery life just sucks.  You can’t get through a day with light use and if you are a heavy user, like myself, you will need to charge before you even get halfway through a day.  The Kanex High Capacity Battery for the G1 solves this and gives a heavy G1 user like myself all day battery life.

With the 1150 mAh battery that ships with the G1, if I start my day fully charged, I will need to plug the charger in at work around 10 am.  Yes the original battery life is THAT bad.  The reason for this is I will use the G1 on the bus during my whole commute.  Some days I am down to 50 percent before I even have that first cup of coffee at work.  I came to the conclusion that a high capacity battery would be a purchase I would probably need to make to cut myself off from the charger during the day and have my phone become more mobile while I am at work.

I was sent sample of the Kanex High Capacity battery  from igonemobile.com.   It adds about 1/4 of an inch to the thickness of the G1.  It’s capacity of 2600mAh is 1450 mAh higher than the original battery.  This is about 2 1/4 times the capacity of the original.  With this battery, I can now get through a day and still have plenty of juice left; most days, when I plug the G1 in at the end of the day before going to bed I’ll still have about 30 percent of the battery left or more.  I have never run out of battery since I receiving the Kanex battery.

The one negative with this battery is that because it is considerably thicker than the original, you must replace the back cover with the one that comes with the Kanex.  The cover that ships with this is a little weaker than the original, plus it has a ton of wasted space between the cover and the G1.  The cover fit well, but it just seems to be made of a little different plastic than the original cover; add that to all of the empty space between the cover and the phone, the cover will flex where the original cover would not flex.  This caused my phone to develop cracks in the cover after just a week or two of use.  I also had one unfortunate incident with my G1 while walking the dog that caused me to drop the phone when I had the Kanex installed on my phone.  The cover now has a nice chip in it thanks to this drop.  If the plastic was a bit heavier weight, the cover might still be in decent shape.

While I did have a problems with the cover, the extra battery life is well worth it.  I may order a second battery just to get a spare and another cover to fix the one that came with my Kanex.

At $39.99 at igonemobile.com, this is a great deal.  It is 20 dollars cheaper than a replacement battery purchased from T-Mobile and you get more than double the capacity of the original battery.  It’s well worth the cost.

What I liked: Plenty of battery life.  This is what they should have shipped with the original G1.

What needs improvement: The cover.  I think they should use a little thicker plastic in places on the cover to cut down on the chance of the cover cracking or flexing.