Video look at the 2600 mAh Google G1 battery and favorite apps

I enjoy using my T-Mobile G1, but with my usage scenarios I can only go half a day with the battery. I solved the battery issue by buying the Seidio 2600 mAh batteryand am now going almost 2 days with a single full battery. I also see daily low memory alerts because of the number of applications I try out and amount of browsing I do. In the video below I show you my new fat G1 and several of my favorite applications in action.

I haven't yet had a chance to fully test the new battery runtime, but daily experiences confirms it makes my G1 a device that goes at least a day with heavy usage. That battery life does come at the sacrifice in size though. The G1 is not a slim or particularly attractive device and like a buddy recently said the OS feels like a beta and is targeted to geeks so the G1 was just matched to that crowd. You get a new back cover, also covered with soft touch coating, that doubles the depth of the old cover. You do lose the Google branding so it would have been cool if Seidio could have added an Android logo or something. There is a speaker grill and camera opening and the back snaps right into place. The camera opening is quite deep, but does not appear to impact the camera's shooting range.

My G1 still feels good in my hand and is now just a bit thicker. The Seidio 2600 mAh battery sells for US$54.95 and if you use your G1 a lot it may be worth it.

The first application I showed in my video is CadreBible. There are a few Bibles available for the G1, but I particularly like CadreBible for the note taking capability. I just hope more translations are added in the future.

I mentioned around the G1 launch that I wanted to see an official Google Reader on the device and was a bit surprised this wasn't something that was there at launch. I think having a native RSS Reader on the device would have led to more users implementing Google Reader into their daily routine. Greed is now available on the Android Market and is a good implmentation of Google Reader. You have buttons to quickly jump to What's New, Folders, Feeds, and Starred Items and as you can see in the video it looks pretty good.

Electric Pocket has been developing Palm and Windows Mobile apps for some time and made their Ringo ringtone manager product available on the Android Market. Ringo for Android is free and lets you set custom ringtones for your contacts' calls and SMS messages. I don't see the group functionality yet, but they may be waiting for a fuller version when commercial apps are supported on the Android Market.

I mentioned that Opera Mini 4.2 is now available as a full release version and is now my default go-to web browser on the G1. I had to always erase my Google browser data and it drove me crazy to lose bookmarks, cookies, and history so I am not using it anymore. Opera Mini 4.2 is fast and stable and also lets me have consistent bookmarks across all of my devices.

A very useful utility is SMS pop-up with this utility SMS message notifications will appear on your display (and make the background fuzzy so you focus on the pop-up) so you can see who it is from and the beginning of the text message. You can also tap right there to reply and Messaging opens up for you to interact with the person.

Developers have made some great utilities that should have been part of the OS, but were gaps in usability. One that you must load is Toggle Settings. This utility lets you toggle on/off 2G/3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, vibrate, and much more. I have it on my center home page and use it all the time.

I have been pretty happy with the Imeem streaming application and have been looking for Pandora. I did see this last week that Last.fm appeared on the Android Market and installed it on my G1. So far, I am liking what I am seeing for the most part with the large album art, ability to love or ban a song, skip a song, etc. I have had a couple of buffering issues when on an EDGE connection, but otherwise it sounds great.

I was pleased to find the TouchDown application a couple of weeks ago because it gave me some basic Exchange syncing capability. The developers have continued to regularly update the software and some new features in the latest version include Global Address Lookup, meeting invite receipt (no setup/sending yet), and accept/decline/tentative meeting responses. I look forward to good things from this application and as you can see here they have a clear list of what they intend to offer. I personally look forward to the multi-day calendars.