OnTrion Samsung OEM Replacement Battery Review

Given the huge variety of electronics devices that use rechargeable batteries, I can't think of a single one that gets more of a workout than the cells in your mobile phone. Day in and day out, the lithium-ion battery in a typical smartphone is always in use, being charged, or keeping the phone humming on standby, ready to spring into action.

Suffice it to say, no rechargeable battery lasts forever. Oftentimes the OEM battery will make it to the end of a typical smartphone contract (two years), although its performance after a year or so will begin to degrade. Whether you want to get back that extra standby life or simply carry around a spare, the market for third-party replacement cell phone batteries is vast.

Normally I gravitate toward OEM cells for replacement lithium batteries, but I've had a lot of luck with third-party makes in recent years... some even outperforming the originals. So when a company by the name of OnTrion offered to send us one of their "OEM compatible" replacement batteries to test out, I eagerly agreed to put it through its paces to see how they stacked up to the original.

The battery in my Samsung Focus is well over a year old at this point, making it a great candidate for comparison, so I asked for whatever their replacement is for that particular phone. Not long after, the OnTrion EB575152VA showed up in our mailbox.

Third party batteries are a mixed bag in terms of quality and appearance. It was clear OnTrion put a little bit of effort into the packing materials and appearance of the product. Build quality was also above average; it feels solid and made of reasonably good quality materials, although not as good as the original.

Unfortunately, the performance of this particular battery that fell short of my expectations. The original Samsung battery that came with the Focus is rated at 1500mAh, while the OnTrion sent is rated at 1150mAh. Generally speaking, the higher the mAh rating of the battery, the longer it will last.

The difference between the two made it difficult to compare head on. At a year old, the 1500mAh Samsung battery bested the OnTrion in nearly every test, but by a slightly wider margin than I would have expected. At a little more than 75% of the total capacity of the original, the OnTrion only lasted %68-70% as long as the original on our standby test and h.264 video playback tests. 5% may not sound like a lot, but that's compared to a battery with a fair amount of use under its belt. Still, it's not enough to say this battery was far inferior to the original in terms of performance, but clearly the capacity isn't the same.

Conclusion

One battery isn't indicative of an entire product line, and even though in this particular case the replacement does not meet or exceed the higher capacity OEM battery, they have other models for other phones that do. For slim-line phones, the even have some expanded capacity batteries that come with a new back plate to accommodate the girth. The product I tested did perform consistently, and in mostly within the range I would have expected for the power rating. Compared to some other third-party batteries, that's pretty good.

Based on this experience, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend OnTrion as a reliable third party product. For Focus or Epic owners considering the EB575152VA, it's a decent spare if you can get it on sale, but it won't give you the performance of the original or other higher capacity batteries.