I’m pretty happy with my Backlit+Bivert Game Boy pocket. After several hours playing with it, I was surprised by the battery life. The Game Boy pocket is known to runs out of juice faster than the others Game Boy models, because it uses AAA batteries (typically 750 / 800 mAh) instead of AA batteries (typically 2200 / 2500 mAh).
Wikipedia says that the Original Game Boy Pocket last about 10 hours. Let’s check the real battery life of a backlit modded Game Boy Pocket !
Test conditions
The batteries I used for the test are a pair of AAA NiMH (Amazon Basics) batteries which already have about 10 recharge cycles. So they are quite brand new. Of course, I have fully charged them before the test.
The game I used is a standard original cartridge : Donkey Kong. The result would have been different with a flashcart. I choose this game because it plays a lot of different demos with animations and musics from the title screen.
The sound volume was at about half or 3/4 level. However, regarding the real elapsed time during the test, I removed the sound recorded in the video because there was a lot of external noises.
Finally, it is important to note that the modded Game Boy Pocket has a 470uF decoupling capacitor soldered on the 5v regulator output. Again, the result would have been different without it.
