7:15 pm, Thursday, August 26th. That’s when my new Seidio Innocell 3,500mAh extended EVO battery finished its first charge, according to my EVO 4G. I expected a major improvement in my gadget’s daily lifespan after installing the roughly $70 (with shipping) brick. After all, it should hold more than twice as much juice as the 1,500mAh battery that shipped with my phone. But this isn’t just about extending battery life and minimizing hassles: I’m on an all-out mission to make my EVO 4G a reliable, heavy-use workhorse that I can push all day long without worry of getting stranded, disconnected. So when that battery finished charging, I installed Juice Defender, Ultimate Juice (the €3.79 – as of this writing – add-on that unlocks some JD features), and Juice Plotter, which provides visualization of battery usage over time. Here I am, 24 hours later, with 51% battery left. For the last full day, I have not turned the phone off or plugged it in. [EDIT: That is, aside from a 10-minute USB connection for capturing screenshots, which explains the brief spike in the Plotter image below.]

That’s pretty amazing, right? During that time, I was on the phone for over an hour, sent and received a dozen or so text messages, took a handful of pictures, listened to MP3s until I fell asleep, browsed the webs, installed applications, and sent and received around ten emails. Granted, I didn’t play games or use GPS and I only turned 4G on and then immediately off, as needed. Still, I would say the prospects for this set up are pretty good.

If you own an EVO 4G, you already know what an incredible detractor battery life is to the appeal of the handset. The WiMAX radio and that giant display need power, and lots of it. I used to charge it for a couple of hours in the morning, as it was always dead from standing by over night. Then I would charge it in the car while taking my wife to work or if I had to run some errands. Then I would use it for a few hours during work, after which it would be plugged back in for an hour or two so I could finish out the day with my phone and listen to audio in bed. If you have the phone, your details are different, but the pattern is the same: use, charge, use, dead. For those of you without an EVO, battery life was referred to by many a high profile tech site as “the deal-breaker.” Yes, battery life is a daily, constant concern for owners. And as much as I love the phone, that’s the topic that came up whenever someone asked for my opinion. It still will be the topic of discussion when someone asks me about EVO, but now, I’ll have suggestions rather than criticism alone. (cont.)

Function over fashion…