Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

I bumped into this one on Mugen's site:
1320mAh replacement for BL-5J

Now, according to this article, on N97 Mugen Power's 1800mAh replacement greatly increased battery life compared to the original 1500mAh while fitting in with the old back cover. So maybe this one is worth considering for the N900, even though it is quite pricey.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

The original N900 battery is 1320mAh anyway, so you won't get any increase of battery life. Pricewise it looks about the same as a genuine Nokia battery, so I wouldn't bother.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

It's not just the mAh printed on the battery that matters. As you can see there's only 300mAh (20%) increase on the N97 battery yet the battery life is increased by a LOT more.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

It's on the way. :) I will report how's the battery life but I guess it will be at least 4-5 days. I have like four extended batteries for different devices from Mugen already. They're all great.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

im just worried about the new back, possibly making camera not function correctly.. for e.g. you cannot use flashlight app without back on

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

I really need that huge battery, my N900 lasts 6 hours after charge with moderate usage.. (Only GSM + Google talk, no wi-fi, 3G, GPS etc, 2 desktop pages one with icons and one with 3 links + media player widget)

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

With the new cover, N900 detects it as cover missing. Camera still works, but flashlight doesn't, it probably wants the cover to be in place and camera door opened?

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

What about the memory card - does that still work?

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

Nope, memory card doesn't work.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

The back cover is detected using a magnetic field sensor - no magnet, no back cover, no memory card.

The state of the camera cover is detected using some type of light sensor - as the door opens iit slides a (highly reflective?) white patch in front of a sensor. When this patch is removed the door is considered closed.

I guess the Mugen battery has the white patch, so the device thinks the door is permanently open, but it has no magnet, so it never knows the case is attached! Not sure why the flashlight doesn't work in this situation, though.

I suppose you could add your own magnet by gluing part of a fridge magnet inside the Mugen cover, which should work - there must be plenty of room! Although it may end up being too far away from the sensor to be detected, so gluing it permanently to the magnet sensor may be the only option.

Can't help thinking Mugen have done a terrible job on this product - the battery is way too big for ordinary people, and the cover they replaced wasn't just a simple hunk of plastic.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

That is very disappointing. I would have possibly considered this battery if I were on a flight or something, save me from lugging an external battery pack. But this is ridiculous.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

There's no white patch on the mugen power, the N900 detects the camera door as "Closed" all the time. However, it's clever enough to let you use camera when the back cover is "missing".

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

I got my 2400 mAh Mugen battery today.
Now charging. Instructions say it should charge 12 hours, so I obey the rules. Will tell you if I notice something fishy, and also if it works as promised.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

confirmed. Oh ****. :-(

Do not buy these until they get it fixed.
I will demand they send a new back cover what works.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

Thank goodness for that, although I wonder if the addition of a magnet (to get the memory card to work by signalling the presence of the cover) will then mean the camera DOESN'T work without the white patch?


Only goes to show Mugen put even less thought into this battery & replacement cover than I first imagined! :(

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

jesus monkey f*** !
that hurts.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

I blame also Nokia for designing a back cover which is so expensive to replace. In N95 battery door and lens cover were separate, and there were no problems to get bigger battery for that.

Nokia could be nice and tell how 3rd parties can fix the problem, because Nokia doesn't provide bigger battery itself anyway.

I wonder also if camera indeed is affected, because there is some sensor which maybe detects if there is black (lens cover close) or white (lens cover open) front of it.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

I emailed mugen with a detailed description of the problem. The CSR said she forwarded my description to the engineering team. Let's see what they say :)

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

Yes, even the current back cover must be quite expensive to make, considering it already went through 2 redesigns before this. Adding a magnet and some reflective material means additional work instead of just stamping/molding all-plastic cover.

Camera still works. The back cover is not detects, so N900 ignores the asbence of door open signal. Makes sense, the sensor data is telling N900 that the camera lens is not blocked by anything.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

The back cover is pretty good - it feels good and safe holding N900 in hand now. ;)

The only drawback is memory card and not appearing flashlight panel. But knowing Mugen Power Batteries I guess they could send us all new battery covers. :) At least I hope.

Why not try to solve it the other way? It has to be just some config file or dbus message... We just have to find out how Flashlight checks for opened/closed camera lens cover and then you may look for a way how to make some permanent changes.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

I ordered one, but I'm not sure when it's due, or whether I will actually use it.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

Well it looks as if you guys will have plenty of space under the cover. You could add a magnet like this guy did. That if mugen doesn't fix it.

x

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

Mugen is working on redesigning the back cover to fix this memory card issue (got email).

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

Has anyone tried holding a fridge magnet over the Mugen back cover... does the camera continue to work? My suspicion is that Mugen will have to do more than just add a magnet.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

Yes, they'll need to add a white patch for the camera shutter sensor as well.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

Yes, I tried yesterday, and when the magnet is there, camera doesn't work anymore because then N900 thinks the lens cover is shut. It needs that white reflecting patch also. Rather interesting design I must say. Separate battery door would be so much better considering this is a geekphone and everyone eventually needs a bigger battery.

Well, I am using now anyway this Mugen 2400 mAh battery to see how it performs. I try to manage without the microMMC now until they send a new back cover. So far (after 16h use) seems pretty good. Chargelevel bars have gone down from 8 to 6. I will get back with this after weekend when I prolly will post some BatteryGraph snapshots.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

After first charge and 24 hours of use (some emails and web surfing via 2g/3g/wifi) it took 15% of battery life. With the original battery it would take 25-30%.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

I've got it working here with a neodymium magnet and a bit of white cardboard -- strangely, Flashlight wouldn't work without the white strip for me, even before I installed the magnet.

I really hope their fix involves a lens cover (maybe sliding vertically...), but until then, it's working great.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

care to share? im curious about this, i really want bigger battery..... thanks

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

Flashlight seems to require lens cover open, and doesn't seemclever enough to allow operation if back cover is entirely missing.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

As promised, here is the snapshot from BatteryGraph from the last 21 days. One can see clearly when the original 1320 mAh was changed to Mugen 2400 mAh battery (2010-03-25).
The last two cycles are with the 2400 mAh battery.

(a thumbnail only here)
http://talk.maemo.org/attachment.php...1&d=1269878175

Thanks to Jeroen Witteman for implementing the feature request of wide screenshots from BatteryGraph!

Because there is a limit, how big PNG image is embeddeble in this forum, the original image is here:
http://imagebin.org/90742

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

Apparently the higher charge of the Mugen battery isn't reported by the HAL api. Otherwise the BatteryGraph would have scaled automatically (scale for voltage and charge are automatically adjusted according to the maximum values which are recorded in the database)

You could check this by running the following command in the console (which probably gives the same results with the Mugen battery)
The battery charge was 840 mAh when I ran this command on my device (with factory default battery)

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

There's no means of communication with the battery, so it shouldn't know.

Bizarrely, though, mine reports lower capacity:Unfortunately, I have no stock battery to test it with, but I suspect it would read the same (wrong) values. Maybe it infers design capacity from the first full cycle or something...


@f2thak: nothing to share, really. Put a strip of white cardboard over the lens-cover sensor, put an 18mm neodymium magnet over the door sensor (the edge will stick to the battery), and put the cover on.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

I got mine today, and wow, what a monstrosity! Well, it's not all bad; think of the fashion statement -- this guy is off the planet! <g>

I certainly will not carry this with me jogging. I'll have to see if I can even happily walk around with it in my pocket -- maybe I'll buy a crutch to help me hold up the pocket :)

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

Mine reports lower design capacity as well. There actually IS a way to ask the battery for its capacity, through the third pin. It's connected to a resistor, the resistance signals the design capacity. N900 seems to ignore it though.

I noticed that the battery meter is quite confused by the mugen battery. At some times the rate of discharge is same as with the original battery, but then the meter realizes that something is wrong, and corrects itself by showing 0 discharge for half an hour, sometimes it even adjusts the charge level upwards :)

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

My guess is that it isn't ignored, since different batteries give different 'design' values. Even the same battery, across device restarts, gives slightly different capacity values.

So most likely the Mugen thing has a wrong size resistor, or the phone refuses to believe in the huge capacity.

I'm getting that even with the default battery...

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

Right after the Mugen 2400 mAh battery was fully charged and detached from the charging cable:
http://talk.maemo.org/attachment.php...1&d=1269965394

Somehow N900 seems to be little messed up with this "huge" battery. Today I left with "8 bars" in the morning, but suddenly in the afternoon bars dropped from 8 to 1 and it was yelling "battery is almost empty, gimme juice!" The battery had been in use before that and after the last full charge 25 hours. All that time, 25 hours, BatteryGraph and status panel showed 8 bars.

Seems like the voltage output from device is more reliable than current and charge-bars output.

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

I assumed Mugen would account for the card function, but seems to have overlooked it. No point in buying this, since I use my microsd card a lot.

I am glad I checked this thread before buying- Thanks!

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

o.o ....Since no ones really posting the total amount of hrs it took for battery to drain, I assume that:

1) The battery is pretty much useless as it acts radically, sometimes jumping from 8 to 1 bars.

2) The battery is sometimes not fully charged because n900 does not detect the mugen batteries design properly...

3) The Mugen battery and It's Cover gives a hell of a lot of problems...

Correct me if I'm mistaken? plz

Re: Mugen Power Batteries
 

See just few articles back, it has a link
http://imagebin.org/90742
There, in the end of the graph, you'll see two charge+drain cycles with Mugen battery. The cycles before those two last ones are with the original battery.