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Some weeks ago I received the Mugen Power 4500 mA Extended Battery for
iPaqs 4700 series with the idea of writing a review for my site. Here
are some pictures of it:
Pictures of the Package.
Front and Back view.
Top and Bottom view
I was very surprised to see how Mugen Power was able to fit 4500 mAh of
Power in that small battery. Once installed, my hx4700 did not lose it's
shape at all as you can see from the following pictures.
Side View
Left-Top View
Bottom Left View
Bottom View
After a few weeks of use I started to test the battery
in different conditions to get the maximum battery life in each of those
tests. The Brightness level in all tests was at about 75%. I used in my
tests a program that I made a while ago called BattBench,
measuring the time that took the battery level to go from 100% to 30%,
the program then calculates the total time that it would take from 100%
to 0%. Why from 100% to 30%? Because in a series of previous tests I
found that knowing the time that takes a battery to be drained from 100% to 30% the calculation of how much time is needed to go from 100% to 0% by my program is quite exact. The
following results are the total time from 100% to 0%.
The first test was just letting the battery drain with
the hx4700 on and not using it at all. In these conditions the battery
lasted 14.06 hours .
My second test was in the above same conditions but this
time with WiFi ON. This time the battery lasted 11 hours. A
really amazing result.
My 3rd test was having the hx4700 playing a movie with
WiFi OFF and it took 10.00 hours to drain the battery.
My last test was having the hx4700 playing a movie but
this time with WiFi ON: 8.30 hours.
Conclusion
This is the second Mugen Power Battery that I own and I
can't think of me having a Pocket PC without a Mugen Power Battery on
it. This battery gives me the freedom of mind of not having to think
about to recharge the battery everyday after work.
I don't want to end this article without saying a few
words about the latest "HP Bug" added in the latest ROM
update. According to some reports that I have read and that were
confirmed by my contact in Mugen Power, the OEM Extended Battery and the
Mugen Power Battery do not work well with the latest ROM having a
performance that is the same or worse than the normal battery that comes with
hx4700 series. HP and Mugen Power know about the problem and both are
working in a solution. Fortunately, I did not installed the latest ROM,
to me it does not make sense to install it and then after a few weeks,
install the Upgrade to Windows Mobile 5.
Update: HP has released a patch that can be downloaded here that fix the bug introduced in ROM version 1.1 where the extended battery level was not reported correctly.
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