Chosen Solution
Hi, I’ve been an iPhone fan since the 3GS and recently purchased an iPhone 5. After suffering through the appalling battery performance I luckily was able to return it within the buyers remorse period 13 days later. I still want one though and have been closely monitoring the battery drain issues and secretly hoped iOS6.1 would fix the problem. Now that 6.1 is out it doesn’t look good. Soooo I was wondering if anyone has fooled around with increased battery capacity. I know there are external battery cases available but those add to the device length, and aren’t elegant in my opinion. Samsung just came out with a larger battery kit for their S3 which comes with a new rear panel to accomodate the thicker battery. Now we’re talking! After reading through ifixit’s tear down steps I can see the battery compartment mates right to the rear case of the iPhone 5. What if we drill a hole, buy another battery, pass the connector through the hole (maybe with a custom extension), and tie this into the internal battery in parallel doubling the capacity. Of course we would need a nice looking and streamlined rear cover to go over this, but hopefully it can be done with better asethetics and more compactly than the battery cases. Any thoughts? Forget about the aesthetics for a bit. Would my idea work electronically? -Kris
kris, you would have to tweak the PMIC to charge the battery and you would have to have additional circuitry for the second battery. Remember that the batteries are smart batteries, besides storing energy, they also provide and need continuous feedback. There is a lot more to this then to just piggyback a second battery. Of course, nothing is impossible, but those are just a few of the challenge. Putting circuitry and all aside for now, you might have better success with a back case that provides charging to the existing battery through photovoltaic action, a few switching resistors in a circuitry, yup I can see it now :-) Best of luck to you.
