I bought a Motorola Krzr last year. I love the sleek look of the cellphone. It's a remarkably good sized handset. Any larger and it just wouldn't feel proper in my hands. The functionality of the phone is also pretty good. It has awesome sound quality and the battery life is great. It lasts for 4 days if I use it less than 15 minutes otherwise the talktime is a good 4 hours. The only problem is the longevity of the battery itself!



The battery has now become swollen in the middle and no longer holds the charge for any longer than 10 minutes of talk time. Of course, this has occurred about 2 months after the warranty expired on the battery. Of course, that's how it always works ? whether it's a cellphone battery or a pet camel, the warranty is designed to run out a few months before the useful life of the product!

Anyway, I popped over to my local cellphone service provider retail store and they informed me that I was out of luck and I'd have to buy a new battery. Not what I wanted to hear! The usual story about the warranty having expired and a typical life of a cellphone battery being only 12-15 months anyway. So they quoted me $40 for a new battery (plus sales tax), but since I was some sort of premier or whatever member, I was eligible to a 25% discount. So it would work out to only $30. Whoop-de-frikin-do!

At least they were a good 50% discount off the price of batteries just 2 short years earlier! I guess the phone companies figured out that you can't keep charging people more for a battery than the cost of the entire phone!

Before I went to the store, I had checked out the prices online and I saw that they were selling from anywhere between $1.01 and $15.01 dollars! Plus 5 bucks for shipping and handling. This was a huge discount from the retail price quoted to me at the service providers store. Paying $6.00 for a $30 battery is a whopping 80% discount! Now that's some reasonable discount (unlike in malls, where they jack up the price 400% and then give you a 50% discount!). Me likey!

Not only was it right priced, but they had every existing brand and model of battery made for my particular cellphone. If you wanted the no-frills alternative, you could go with the cheapest. However, if you're a super-user, or should I say power yapper, and your mandibles are strong enough to bite through metal, then you'll probably prefer the luxury model battery that has extended talk-time. Mind you, this so-called expensive battery has twice the life of the store recommended battery and only costs half as much! At that rate, you could buy a cellphone battery and a car charger for the same price as the retail battery. Hallelujah! I have finally discovered the optimal way of buying cheap and discounted batteries!

Not only that, but they also carried batteries for PDAs, iPods and a variety of other mp3 players too! Is my life set or what! Goodbye to expensive battery replacement costs. Or should I say ?Goodbuy?.