The international version of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus ships with an ample 1750 mAh battery, which provides decent battery life while maintaining the phone's low profile. As we said in our review, most people shouldn't have any trouble getting through a full day of use with the stock battery.
However, sometimes you just need a little more juice, and that's where Samsung's official extended battery for the GSM Galaxy Nexus comes in. It's a larger 2000 mAh battery pack which gives you a few more hours of use in exchange for a little extra bulk. To clarify, this is different to the 2100 mAh extended battery for Verizon Galaxy Nexus owners -- the Verizon and GSM models use different batteries.
Before we begin, a couple of things to note -- firstly, this is an official Samsung extended battery, as you might've guessed by the logos on the back of the battery door. Secondly, the only way to get hold of this battery, for now, is to import it from South Korea. We hope we'll see broader international availability in the future.
The GSM extended battery comes with a larger battery door to accommodate its slightly thicker size, as you'll see in the animation below. This means the phone isn't as ridiculously thin as with the stock battery, but we found that the slightly raised bulge around the back of the phone actually made it easier to hold. That's a matter of personal preference, though, and you certainly won't notice the extra couple of millimeters when it's in your pocket. Also, even with the extra bulk around the back, the phone manage to fit its way into the couple of protective cases we tried, including the Case-Mate Barely There case, and the Qmadix Snap-on Cover with Holster.
View a larger version of this animation (opens in new tab)
The new battery door is built to the same high standards as the one in the box. Same "hyperskin" texture, same logos. The battery itself contains an NFC antenna, just like the original, and we confirmed that NFC was indeed functional with the extended battery installed.
So how about performance? Well, we've been using the 2000 mAh extended battery for around 36 hours, and in that time we've noticed it gives us around 4 to 5 extra hours with moderate-to-high usage. On a less scientific level, we've noticed that it just seems to hold charge better. We've included a few battery usage screenshots after the jump, and given the performance we've seen out of the extended battery so far, we think we'd be hard pushed to run this thing down in under a day.
As ever, we'll keep you posted with further impressions as we spend more time with the new battery. We've got a couple of screenshots and some more photos after the jump.
Alex was with Android Central for over a decade, producing written and video content for the site, and served as global Executive Editor from 2016 to 2022.
