For those of us who use our smartphones day in and day out, battery life can be a tricky thing to manage. If you don't mind charging your phone throughout the day, or if you're one of the lucky ones who can make it from morning to night, then the built-in battery on your phone might make the grade. But what if you use your device constantly, or demand power-hungry activities such as Wi-Fi hotspots, GPS, or screen brightness to take on the sun?

Luckily there are a few solutions to help solve the battery battle.

I recently got my hands on a bigger internal battery for my Galaxy Nexus. You can see it came with a replacement battery cover to allow for the expanded size.

It's done wonders for my battery life, seeing as I am a constant user. This extended size adds almost three-times the capacity over stock.

The kit was mailed with two batteries, covers, and an external charger. It cost me about $20 and arrived in 15 days, not a bad deal.

In the first frame, you can see how light use and wise Sync, GPS, and WiFi management can get you far. The extra power easily gets me through a light day of music, and holds up well for days of heavy use. I topped it up for an hour or two to get to the 2d 10h mark. This Gnex is running the latest Paranoid Android.

If you are one of the lucky android users with a removable back cover and battery, you might be able to find a 3800mAh battery like this to boost it, that is if you don't mind the love handles.

One of the most common things to find when looking for mobile power are these phone cases. Mostly for iPhones, these cases provide an extra few hours of use on top of your stock battery.

The one pictured is listed as 2000mAh case for the iPhone 5, which packs Apple's 1440mAh internally. In theory, a case like this can clip-on 125% of usage time. Pretty impressive, but a little expensive for $32.

A case battery adds bulk to your phone, in a very noticeable way compared to an internal battery. But it should likewise lengthen your time away from the charger. It also seems to be the only off-the-shelf iPhone battery upgrade.

If you don't mind sparing a spot in your pocket, purse, or bag, an external USB power bank may be the perfect solution to charge your gadgets on the go.

These chargers come in all shapes, sizes, colours, and capacities. Picking one that works for you can be difficult. This one is 11200mAh. Plenty of juice for a few charges of the old iPhone. It also offers two differently wired outputs, one for phones and one for tablets. I've learned that the tablet output charges my phone at a faster rate.

The Konnet PowerEZ Pro is slightly taller than a Bic lighter, and is about 1.5" squared. It takes forever to charge on MicroUSB, but holds itself like a tank in battle. I paid $50 for it at a local computer store.

If you're in the market for a USB power bank, remember that the more mAh the better. Something worth your time is likely to be over 10,000mAh or 10Ah.