I bought a Nokia cellphone last year. I love the futuristic appeal cellphone. It's a really good sized handset. Any smaller and it just wouldn't feel proper in my hands. The functionality of the phone is also pretty good. It has crystal-clear 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 started happening about one and a half months after the warranty date 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 dashed off 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. Great, just what I needed 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 rewards 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 $0.99 and $14.99 dollars! Plus $4.99 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 like paying 20 cents on the dollar! Now that's some reasonable discount (unlike in malls, where they jack up the price 400% and then give you a 50% discount!). I like that sort of deal!

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 battery, you could go with the cheapest. However, if you're a power user, or should I say power talker, and your jaw muscles are strong enough to bite through metal, then you'll probably prefer the high end battery that has extended talk-time. Mind you, this supposedly 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 my preferred method 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 costly battery replacement costs. Or should I say ?Goodbuy?.