I know Anandtech posted a review on the main site for the ZeroLemon GS4 extended battery a year ago (http://anandtech.com/show/7163/zerolemon-7500-mah-samsung-galaxy-s-4-extended-battery-review) and that was helpful to a lot of people so I wanted to post my experience with the Anker GS5 extended battery.
I’ve had my Galaxy S5 since April of this year and figured it was time to get some more battery life out of this phone. The default battery that comes with the phone is okay but for what we do nowadays on our phones like GPS Navigation/E-Mail/Games/Internet surfing/etc. all can eat your battery life faster than a NFL team plowing through an all you can eat buffet. So what do you do? Buy an extended battery of course.
So first off, why did I go with the Anker extended battery over other brands out there? Company and product reputation and reviews. If you search on Amazon for “Anker” you’ll see a wide variety of products they sell and most of them have tons of reviews with good ratings so you know the company doesn’t make crap products. The only decent company right now that has a competing product I would consider going with is ZeroLemon, but if you look at the reviews for the ZeroLemon 7500mah battery people weren’t too happy with the case they were getting with the battery. It sounded to me like ZeroLemon rushed it to market without fully going through all the product quality assurance steps. I now see on Amazon that ZeroLemon offers a 8500mah GS5 battery and new redesigned case so hopefully that will fix the issues everybody was having, but right now it only has 7 reviews and several of the people that reviewed it only have that 1 review credited to their accounts so most likely they are bogus Amazon accounts created to artificially boost the review count and score for the new product.
So with all the issues people were having with the ZeroLemon GS5 battery I decided to go with Anker. I know ZeroLemon can make a good product, my cousin has their GS3 extended battery and it works great but I don’t trust their GS5 battery, how can you botch a case design as bad as they did? Did they even try out their own product before releasing it? Who knows, so anyways that and the fact that Anker offers an 18 month warranty and ZeroLemon offers just their 180 day warranty made the decision easy.
I’ve had my Anker 7500mah battery for a week now and as expected, it has performed great. Installation was fairly easy, battery slid right in without much effort on my part and the case popped on nice and snug, took me a few times at first to get the case on but it was fairly easy. The included case is decent, fits the phone nicely with all the ports on the phone lining up, no issues taking pictures or charging the phone. The case is pretty smooth on the sides though so if you’re prone to dropping phones you better watch it, I wish they would have added some kind of hand gripping to the sides of the case but nothing is perfect I guess.
So now onto the actual performance, as usual Anker is solid here. The battery is like the energizer bunny, it keeps on going and going…...you get the point. For the last week I’ve had this battery I’ve only had to charge it twice and the first time I had to charge it was after a marathon session of playing Clash of Clans (addicting game). I have NOT noticed the phone getting warmer than usual or anything abnormal with the phone using this extended battery. Everything has been running smoothly, it’s great to have a phone that can stay on so much longer so you can finally use everything on the phone without worrying about having a charger nearby.
The only negatives I would have to mention is the phone is no longer water resistant but that’s a tradeoff you have to accept when you buy any extended battery so not really a big deal. The size of the phone is of course thicker and the weight heavier but again you have to expect this when you buy any kind of extended battery. The one thing I almost want to knock a star off for is the lack of NFC support for this battery, I know most people will probably never use NFC but I like to use it. I use the ISIS mobile wallet app on my phone to make payments at places that accept it like Jamba Juice so I won’t be able to do that anymore with this battery in my phone. It’s a little disappointing especially considering that ZeroLemon was able to support NFC in their battery so it makes we wonder why Anker wasn’t able too.
Overall, this Anker extended battery is a great product that helps correct the long time running smartphone issue of running out of battery life fast and constantly having to charge your phone. Bottom Line: Easy to install, works great, and Anker backs it up with an 18 month warranty, I’ve only had this battery a week, so I’ll come back on here and report if I have any issues or anything.
I’ve had my Galaxy S5 since April of this year and figured it was time to get some more battery life out of this phone. The default battery that comes with the phone is okay but for what we do nowadays on our phones like GPS Navigation/E-Mail/Games/Internet surfing/etc. all can eat your battery life faster than a NFL team plowing through an all you can eat buffet. So what do you do? Buy an extended battery of course.
So first off, why did I go with the Anker extended battery over other brands out there? Company and product reputation and reviews. If you search on Amazon for “Anker” you’ll see a wide variety of products they sell and most of them have tons of reviews with good ratings so you know the company doesn’t make crap products. The only decent company right now that has a competing product I would consider going with is ZeroLemon, but if you look at the reviews for the ZeroLemon 7500mah battery people weren’t too happy with the case they were getting with the battery. It sounded to me like ZeroLemon rushed it to market without fully going through all the product quality assurance steps. I now see on Amazon that ZeroLemon offers a 8500mah GS5 battery and new redesigned case so hopefully that will fix the issues everybody was having, but right now it only has 7 reviews and several of the people that reviewed it only have that 1 review credited to their accounts so most likely they are bogus Amazon accounts created to artificially boost the review count and score for the new product.
So with all the issues people were having with the ZeroLemon GS5 battery I decided to go with Anker. I know ZeroLemon can make a good product, my cousin has their GS3 extended battery and it works great but I don’t trust their GS5 battery, how can you botch a case design as bad as they did? Did they even try out their own product before releasing it? Who knows, so anyways that and the fact that Anker offers an 18 month warranty and ZeroLemon offers just their 180 day warranty made the decision easy.
I’ve had my Anker 7500mah battery for a week now and as expected, it has performed great. Installation was fairly easy, battery slid right in without much effort on my part and the case popped on nice and snug, took me a few times at first to get the case on but it was fairly easy. The included case is decent, fits the phone nicely with all the ports on the phone lining up, no issues taking pictures or charging the phone. The case is pretty smooth on the sides though so if you’re prone to dropping phones you better watch it, I wish they would have added some kind of hand gripping to the sides of the case but nothing is perfect I guess.
So now onto the actual performance, as usual Anker is solid here. The battery is like the energizer bunny, it keeps on going and going…...you get the point. For the last week I’ve had this battery I’ve only had to charge it twice and the first time I had to charge it was after a marathon session of playing Clash of Clans (addicting game). I have NOT noticed the phone getting warmer than usual or anything abnormal with the phone using this extended battery. Everything has been running smoothly, it’s great to have a phone that can stay on so much longer so you can finally use everything on the phone without worrying about having a charger nearby.
The only negatives I would have to mention is the phone is no longer water resistant but that’s a tradeoff you have to accept when you buy any extended battery so not really a big deal. The size of the phone is of course thicker and the weight heavier but again you have to expect this when you buy any kind of extended battery. The one thing I almost want to knock a star off for is the lack of NFC support for this battery, I know most people will probably never use NFC but I like to use it. I use the ISIS mobile wallet app on my phone to make payments at places that accept it like Jamba Juice so I won’t be able to do that anymore with this battery in my phone. It’s a little disappointing especially considering that ZeroLemon was able to support NFC in their battery so it makes we wonder why Anker wasn’t able too.
Overall, this Anker extended battery is a great product that helps correct the long time running smartphone issue of running out of battery life fast and constantly having to charge your phone. Bottom Line: Easy to install, works great, and Anker backs it up with an 18 month warranty, I’ve only had this battery a week, so I’ll come back on here and report if I have any issues or anything.