Like most consumers, I love it when I take a gamble and it pays off for me. Recently, I took one when I purchased the ZeroLemon extended battery for my Galaxy SIII smartphone. After a few days of using it, I can safely say this product is well worth the money. Read on to see how exceptional this small company’s products have proven to be.

Now, I love my Galaxy SIII. But a serious disadvantage found in all of its glory is that the battery life is subpar at best. Even when I flashed the device with Cyanogenmod, my battery couldn’t last a full day of heavy use. When I would go to parties or spend weekends somewhere that didn’t have a wall outlet readily available, I’d face having a dead phone or a potentially dead car when I use it to charge my said dead phone. It was a dilemma that I dealt with for a long time, but no more.

I bought the ZeroLemon GSIII extended battery when it showed up as the highest-rated battery of its type on Amazon. It’s advertised as the world’s highest-capacity GSIII battery at 7000mAh (compared to the GSIII’s standard battery capacity of 2100mAh).

When first shopping for extended batteries, I was ignorant in thinking that I could upgrade without making my phone thicker. This is obviously not the case, but I’m stangely okay with it. Allow me to explain.

Originally, the GSIII is a very thin phone. While this is great for your pocket, it’s no so great for holding it. The ZeroLemon case, being triple the battery life, doubles the size of the phone’s thickness. Yes, it looks massive and not at all modern. At this point, I’m fine with that because of the amazing battery sustainability and the great way the phone feels in my hand. The weight is nice and the phone is actually preferable when it’s thicker than when it’s not. A statement like that is blasphemy to the developing tech world, but it’s a true statement (at least for me).

The extended battery is an oddly-shaped fusion of a standard battery and an enormous, larger one on top of it. Together, they form a battery almost larger than the phone itself. Also included in the package is a case that wraps around the phone the same way any other would. The case is stylish and has a rubbery feel, all while protecting the battery, screen, camera, flash and speaker. In fact, it’s so great in doing its job that I think ZeroLemon should sell them separately.

But back to the star of the show: the battery itself. After affixing it to the phone and putting on the case, you’re ready to experience an obscene amount of battery life; so much that you won’t know what to do with your phone when you aren’t charging it all the time. As I write this, I am on my second day of not charging the device, and it’s only gone down to 43%. The screen has been on full brightness for a total of 5 hours of the two days, and the majority of that time has been watching YouTube videos and checking Facebook/Twitter. I actually have so much battery life to use, I went over my data limit trying to find things to do to kill my phone. Yea, this thing is a tank.

That’s not even the best part: I’m only in my first charge of the new battery, and ZeroLemon says it will reach optimal capacity after about 5 recharge cycles. It blows my mind to think that this amazing performance I’ve seen so far is only going to get better.

I’ll bet the near-perfect rating on Amazon is starting to make sense to you right about now. Everything I’ve highlighted so far is why 416 out of the 535 customer reviews on Amazon are 5/5 stars. But what don’t people like about the battery?

Some people are reporting that the battery decreases signal strength of the phone, averaging at around 2 bars where they used to get four. While this not a terribly obvious issue for me, I have noticed that the signal is less than optimal after installing the battery. On the other hand, I could simply be experiencing a psychological phenomenon that makes me think I see a decrease, just because I read about it. Either way, it’s worth noting that the issue has made a few reviews suffer.

Other than that, the loss of other stars is largely due to the size of the phone when the battery is equipped. Personally, I think that’s something you’ll just have to find a silver lining in, like I did.

I’m still beaming with how thrilled I am with this battery. I took a gamble on a small company that doesn’t have much exposure, and luckily their reputation pulled through for me.

My friend Nick of the famous Gorgon Reviews movie review website also bought the ZeroLemon extended battery. Here are his thoughts on the product:

“Recently I got the ZeroLemon Extended Battery for my Samsung Galaxy S III, before it was cool. If you have a new smartphone, you probably run into a similar problem. The batteries are basically crap. If you are actively using it, it will drain fast and every night you have to charge it for the next day.

After the recommended time for charging, I noticed the difference almost instantly. After one day, my phone was still in the green, well over 60%. I did my best to never turn it off, and use it as much as I normally would. At the end of day two, I did end up reaching red, but I felt no worry to find the nearest charger.

I don’t think the battery will able to reach the three days of use, as it requires waiting until the last few percentages before fully charging back up, and I just don’t have the patience required for that. But it still has helped me two ways. One, I no longer worry about using my phone too much during the day, knowing that it can handle over a days worth of tasks. Two, I can now cover larger day long events as a reporter, while maintaining a live twitter presence as the event unfolds. Basically, it is my new favorite thing in this world.”