After about a week of frustration and laziness (to search for a fix), I decided to buy a replacement battery. But the question was, whom do I contact for the replacement battery? HTC? Google? or Brightstar (the distributor) ? Phew….

While I was Googling around to find an answer, I came across the site of Mugen Power http://www.mugen-power-batteries.com/. It looked interesting enough to try shipping a replacement battery from here. So I decided to chuck out Google, HTC and Brightstar and go for Mugen Power. But it wasn’t a joy ride to start with. The first stumbling block was as follows:

Will Mugen Power’s ‘TMobile G1 Dream battery’ work for ADP1?
The battery that Mugen Power sells is labelled for TMobile G1 Dream. While TMobile G1 Dream and ADP1 are the same hardware, I didn’t want to take any chances.

So, I filled up the Contact Us form on the website asking whether the same battery will work for my ADP1. I got an E-mail reply within 4 hours asking me to send the photographs of the phone’s battery. After sending the photographs, I got a reply within 7 hours confirming that the T-Mobile G1’s battery will fit in my ADP1. The E-mail also mentioned the link http://www.mugen-power-batteries.com/htc/htc-dream.html from where I could buy the battery.

The take home from the above are:

• While the responses were coming from a Gmail address , Mugen Power’s support is quick and effective.
• The battery for T-Mobile’s G1, sold by Mugen Power, fits in and works for an Android Dev Phone 1.

The shipping experience
Following the link, I bought “Mugen Power HTC Dream T-mobile Google Phone G1 1200mAh Extended Replacement Battery [HLI-G1SL]“. Sorry for the long name, but that’s what it is called.

Note that I went for the 1200 mAh battery. The battery which ships with ADP1 is a 1150 mAh – so this Mugen Battery was hardly an extended battery. But, one can also go for 2400 or the 3900 mAh batteries which will keep your phone powered up for days! But note that the 2400 and 3900 mAh options need a extended battery cover due to the size of the battery. Fortunately the battery cover is shipped alongwith.

Coming back to my shipping experience, I ordered the 1200 mAh battery priced @ $26.95. I went for Free Shipping and not for the Speedpost option. The latter costs $36.13 (more than the cost of the battery!) but promises delivery within 2-6 business days. Free shipping quoted a delivery within 10-15 business days. But guess what, I received the battery in 8 days! I placed the order on 29 April and it got delivered to my residence at New Delhi, India on 8 May.

Seems I was lucky because one of my friends who ordered an extended battery for his HTC Touch, received the battery after 15 days at Gurgaon, Haryana, India.

Note that there were no import or customs duty to pay. That is, I owned the battery at the cost of $26.95 (all inclusive).

To sum up, the Mugen Power battery came to rescue when I was desperate. When fully charged, the battery keeps the phone alive for about 7-8 hours under heavy usage – Twitter, Facebook and E-mail sync, WiFi and GPS at times, screen at its full brightness and active wallpaper! This performance is almost same as that of the ADP1’s battery – which it shipped with. My phone is powered by Mugen Power battery for more than a month now.

To enable E-mail notifications, login into Google Wave. Move your mouse over Inbox (on the left). Click on the Arrow (pointing downwards) and select Notifications.

Google Wave: E-mail Notification Feature

You can opt to get notified about new and updated Waves immediately (as it happens), hourly or weekly. The notifications are sent to the E-mail address associated with your Google Wave. This will be the GMail or Google Apps (in my case) E-mail address at which you got the Google Wave invite.

I tested it with “immediately” option and found that Google Wave sends an E-mail when

• A new Wave is created and you are added as a participant
• A new Blip (message) is created in a Wave in which you are a participant
• When an existing Blip is updated in the Wave in which you are participating

Google Wave will not send a notification when:

• It has already sent you notification for a new or updated Wave. It will not send any further notification for any update in that particular Wave, till you log into Google Wave and click on the new or updated Wave.

A new Wave E-mail Notification sent by Google Wave

Issues/Bugs:

• The notifications are sent even when you are using Google Wave – logged into it and seeing the Waves. Why a notification when I can see a new Wave(s) being created and updated in front of me ? So what if I choose to click on them after sometime. Ideally the notifications should be sent after I have closed the Google Wave window on my Web Browser. I said “closed” and not logged out because logging out of Google Wave may mean to log out from other Google apps too.
• The “Immediately” notification is not so immediate. Few notifications were delayed by as long as 14 minutes! Though at times I have received the notification within a minute. This does not fit well with a real time app like Google Wave. Immediate notifications must be “immediate”, as it happens and within seconds.
• The notification settings link in the E-mail (notification) just opens Google Wave and does not show the Window or popup to change the settings. Note that this bug is a known issue as per the Google Wave blog.

Good to have in the next version:

1. There should be a provision to send notifications to any E-mail address and not only to the associated Gmail or Google Apps E-mail address.
2. The notification settings, besides being system wide and applicable to all Waves, should be present for individual Waves too. The notification settings for individual Waves should override the system wide settings. This way one can subscribe to notifications only for the Wave in which he/she is interested.
3. If point 2 is implemented, there should be an exclusive option to get notified about New Waves created by others – where you are added as a participant.

I was wanting this feature so much that last year I wrote a Robot for my own use (with a hard coded E-mail address) to send me notifications for updates in Waves. I add this Robot to the Waves of my interest. I even wrote an article in PCQuest magazine about this Robot. For those who are interested in the code, refer to this link at the PCQuest forums to download the article with the code intact. If Google Wave could bring the Notification settings to individual Waves, I would no longer need to use my Robot.