We've all had those day where we wish we had just a little more juice in our phone's battery to finish a movie or complete one more level on Candy Crush. I know there are portable batteries you can use, but who wants to carry yet another device in our always increasing arsenal of mobile products. I recently received the opportunity to review a couple of Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Mugen batteries — a slim 3320mAh battery and an extended 6640mAh battery — and I want to share my results.
The Extended Battery is has a voltage of 3.85V and is 16.8mm thick, which significantly bulks up an already large phone. This additional bulk can be inconvenient for those of us that carry the phone in our pocket, but I did get used to it after a bit. One downside I found with the Extended Battery, though, is that I no longer have room for the magnetic plate used to connect to the mount I have in my car.
The Extended Battery cover has a similar feel to the stock battery cover on the Galaxy Note 4, but includes a kickstand on the back.. The kickstand is a nice feature, but I would have liked it to be centered in the middle of the back instead of being set off to one side. When using the phone in landscape mode, I tend to always rotate the phone 90 degrees to the left. However, when using the kickstand in this position, the phone is angled in what is almost a 45 degree up viewing angle. Unlike some other kickstand cases I've seen, the kickstand felt sturdy and gave me confidence that my phone wouldn't fall over if accidentally bumped. However, the kickstand almost felt like it would pop off the case if I accidentally bumped it.
The Slim Extended Battery is the same size as the stock Note 4 battery and runs at a voltage of 3.85V. The standard form allowed me to use my existing battery cover and case without needing a separate battery cover.
The 3320mAh Slim Extended Battery performance was on par with the stock Samsung battery, and I achieved a little over a day usage before needing to charge the phone. I'm not a power user, but I did use Spotify for a hour, watched a couple movies, opened a few other apps and made a few calls throughout the day. When playing movies on Netflix, I noticed a 24 percent drop in battery for an average 90 minute movie. This is slightly higher that the 22 percent drop I encountered with the stock Samsung battery.
The 3200mAh battery gave me one day and 8 hours before I dropped to 5 percent charge remaining and charged the phone. When testing the 6400mAh Extended Battery, it's recommended to allow the battery to charge several hours after the battery indicator shows 100%. This is due to the note 4 device limitation to display extended battery capacity in the battery indicator. After taking this step, I noticed the battery performance significantly increased giving me double the performance of the slim battery I tested.
Overall, I was impressed with the Mugen batteries I tested. The extended battery can come in handy when you are away from home and don't have access to a charger or you don't want to carry an additional battery.
Links to batteries:
Note 4 6640mAh Extended Battery
