Do higher capacity aftermarket batteries have to be calibrated after switching out the OEM one?

[Hugh Johnson]

I have a Samsung S3 with the OEM 2,100 mAh battery. I bought a generic 3,800 mAh (or so claims) battery from ebay. When swapping out the OEM battery for the new one, do battery stats need to be recalibrated?

This supposedly higher mAh battery seems to drop quite fast, and using an inline USB voltmeter it said 1,841 mAh were transferred to recharge the battery to full from 3%. Since it so far appears to be just a relabeled generic battery I'd like to know if somehow the battery stats file in the phone could be preventing it from reaching its true, glorious, advertised potential!

Thanks.

 

[Mooncatt]

Aftermarket batteries and clones are abundant, so quality can be hit and miss. I'm not sure how eBay handles product reviews, but I always check places like Amazon for reviews to see if a battery is questionable.

I've used OEM extended batteries in a Droid Bionic and S3. In both cases I found some sellers with reviews claiming poor performance as if they were clones. Once I found batteries with good reviews, I bought them and had no trouble. I know you can calibrate a battery and it wouldn't hurt if you think you have a problem. In my case, both batteries performed well from the start and didn't need a calibration.

 

[Hugh Johnson]

Thanks for the tips.

I'm pretty confused now with the capacity. I charged it to full from around 40% and the inline USB voltmeter still says it took around 1,800 mAh. I also have an 11,200 mAh portable charger that was giving me unexpected numbers when charged. I'm starting to suspect the voltmeter may be inaccurate - but it appears that if it is inaccurate it would be so inaccurate it would be surprising it even transferred power through itself!

If my inline voltmeter isn't funky, would charging a completely dead battery to full with the phone off be an accurate way to check the battery's capacity?

 

[Mooncatt]

I would agree with you that charging with the phone off is the most accurate if you're measuring how much capacity is in there. The meter wouldn't be able to differentiate how much power is going to the battery and how much to run the phone, so I would expect you to see odd numbers with the phone on. Only I'd expect the numbers to be higher than with the phone off.

That makes me wonder if you're wording your post right. You're referring to using a volt meter, but those usually don't measure current capacity. Are you sure it's reporting capacity in mAh and not just current? I'm not too familiar with USB inline meters, so you could be right.

 

[Hugh Johnson]

Sorry about saying volt meter, I couldn't think of the correct word at the time. It's actually a multimeter. I understand the numbers would be higher charging the phone while it's on since it would also be using the battery at the same time.

I'm in the process of discharging the 2,100 mAh OEM battery. If it charges higher than ~1800 mAh (while off) then I know the aftermarket battery is junk - which is KINPS brand, rated at 3800 mAh and has EB-L1G6LLU for a product number.

I have also noticed a large variance in amperage drawn depending which USB cable I use. I don't know if the S3 supports 2.1 amp charging but I haven't been able to get anything going into the battery higher than ~0.68 amps on either the 1 amp or 2.1 amp port on my USB wall charger (as well as from my PC). The wall charger says it has an output of 3,100 mA, and I know there's some dual port chargers that have a single 2.1 amp converter that will split the power if both ports are used simultaneously. I've only used one port at a time though, but this also came from ebay. Just saying not all USB cables are the same.

Edit: OEM charged up to 2,164 mAh. On the plus side since my phone is the only deivce I regularly carry with me that would need a portable charger it just occured to me while doing these measurements that I can carry that junk battery around instead and save some weight in my backpack.