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How to charge with a higher current?

When using my Toch Diamond as a GPS which is connected to a car charger, the battery will run flat in a few hours. Is there a charger that will charge it with a higher current than 500mA? It is inconvenient for a long trip.

Wait ..... you are saying that your GPS app runs your battery down even while plugged in the car charger?
Mine doesn't do that...

yangys said:
Is there a charger that will charge it with a higher current than 500mA? It is inconvenient for a long trip.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you using an original HTC charger?
Some of the generic after-market car chargers output a lower current than what the GPS is actually draining from the phone, so effectively, rather than just charging it, that charger is simply "extending" the time it takes to drain the phone battery.
I'm not near my HTC car charger at the moment, but if I remember correctly the HTC charger outputs 2A.. ie, 2000mA? (can someone correct me if I'm wrong?) And I have no flat battery problems while using TomTom... (The fone does get warm, but that 's another issue that's been discussed previously...........)

Most car chargers only do 500mA
When using good navigation it will pull more than 500mA off your phone, so eventually, the phone will drop dead It's true, I have this too.
With an other ROM it can be fixed! Now I don't have this problem anymore. You can also connect 2 chargers parallel but you got to have the possibility in your car. Or you buy a universal USB car charger which can handle 1A. Just like home wall charger (No 2000mA ).
Good luck!

My car chager (with a mini USB output plug) is rated at 5V 2A. My suspicion is that the charge current is determined by the phone, not by the charger. The charger is simply a (constant voltage) 5V power supply. Even if the chager is capable of supplying 2A, the charging circuit in the phone is limiting it to a maximum of 500mA. If the phone is designed clever enough, it could allow a higher charging current though signaling via the two signal wires of the USB plug. Would anyone know if this is the case or not for Touch Diamond? If yes, what would be the signals for higher charge current?
Your idea about using two chargers sounds interesting. Would you be able to give us more details about how to charge one phone with two chargers? Or are you thinking of having two phone and two chargers? That is, after one phone battery gets flat, simply uses another phone.
Riel said:
Most car chargers only do 500mA
When using good navigation it will pull more than 500mA off your phone, so eventually, the phone will drop dead It's true, I have this too.
With an other ROM it can be fixed! Now I don't have this problem anymore. You can also connect 2 chargers parallel but you got to have the possibility in your car. Or you buy a universal USB car charger which can handle 1A. Just like home wall charger (No 2000mA ).
Good luck!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Confused
I have got an O2 Ignito (diamond) I have done an 8 hour round trip using GPS and my battery has not drained... And i do have the original I am using the charger that came with my polaris. my batt always stays full when plugged in and gps is running maybe your charger is what is causing it to drain
Regards
/KSPVs

Needs a 1 amp charger.

Battery Charger ?

Hi Here in Mexico dont have a UK plugs and of corse my phone charger dont fits o the outlet but i have a USB Charger I can plug the Data cable to carge but the only question i have is this specs
Samsung Original Travel Charger is output : 5V = 0.7a
My USB output : 5V = 0.5a
Please Help
I think the only diff is the charges Times is less amp takes more time to full the battery.

i use the uk charger here in the u.s. i believe they are set for multiple power inputs just get a cheap adapter to change the plug configuration. that is what i am using.

i posted the below in another charger thread but in case it serves here
not sure if a lot of folks are just unaware, but every phone i've had charged fine from a usb port off my computer
since i started tethering my phone to my laptop (browse the web from family couch) december 2009, i haven't used the wall charger
even if i'm not tethering, i've got a spare usb cable on the desktop, that when i sit down at the desk, the phone or whatever device, gets connected to - far more convenient and fewer items occupying space on the desk
plus, i've got that Tmo car charger that just has a usb port on it's end - so the same cable that i use to tether to the laptop (when in the car), if i'm using the phone in the dock for nav, runs down to the charger - the charger, with no cable hanging off it when not in use, let's me leave the charger in the socket 24/7 - no looking for it in the glove box and untangling it etc
that charger is simply converting the 14V car voltage to 5 V the USB port normally delivers
2 - 3.5 hours seems to take my 1150mah battery from low charge to full
for what it's worth

celtichazard said:
Hi Here in Mexico dont have a UK plugs and of corse my phone charger dont fits o the outlet but i have a USB Charger I can plug the Data cable to carge but the only question i have is this specs
Samsung Original Travel Charger is output : 5V = 0.7a
My USB output : 5V = 0.5a
Please Help
I think the only diff is the charges Times is less amp takes more time to full the battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is nothing wrong with that. 5V is all you need. As long as you don't supply too high a voltage, your batteries should be safe. Don't worry about the amperage (current). Lower current (0.5a vs 0.7a) just means that it takes longer to charge the batteries.
And for those who really must have a wall charger that charges the batteries directly, you can buy a universal USB charger (http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.15264). It works great. It plugs into any USB charger or laptop USB port, and charges any battery rated 3.7V. You can find them on eBay for just a couple of dollars.

[Q] Are all USB Charges the Same?

I have about 5 Micro USB wall charger laying around, so when I got my Captivate I was happy to see that it used a Micro USB.
My question is.... Is all of the Micro USB power supplies the same? the ones i have are from different Motorola phones.
Thanks,

Coldheat1906 said:
I have about 5 Micro USB wall charger laying around, so when I got my Captivate I was happy to see that it used a Micro USB.
My question is.... Is all of the Micro USB power supplies the same? the ones i have are from different Motorola phones.
Thanks,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I assume you mean the wall charger. The charger and the cable are actually separate. You can plug any USB cable into this that has a female USB end. The other end could be mini, micro, ipod, or something else.
They are not all the same - the Moto charger delivers more Amps then the Captivate. Some charger deliver less. The phone will only draw what it is set to, so you can use just about all of them.

cool thanks

The short answer: It's probably fine
The long answer:
USB is a specification, so anything using usb should be designed to run at (for USB 2.0) 4.4-5.25 V. It *should* be fine for charging any microUSB device (the "U" is for "Universal") but I guess it's possible (though unlikely) that the company that made the charger did something funky/proprietary with the voltage/amperage, which would make it not USB even though it uses a USB port. See if the charger says the operating voltage/current on it. It should say around 5V and somewhere in the range of 150-900 mA. If it does, you're golden, if it doesn't say you're still probably fine.

The phone is actually quite picky about chargers. It can recognize a USB charger in either (1) AC wall charger or (2) USB charger. If your paritular charger can be recognized as AC charger, it can be charged in a faster rate if your wall charger can deliver. The Captivate comes with a 700ma wall charger. Some can deliver 1000ma or even higher but Captivate internally limits to 1000ma max from what I read. The higher the amprage, the faster it can charge the battery.
On the other hand, if your charger is recognized as USB charger, not only you will be prompted to select USB mode (if you configured to do so) as if you connect it to a PC, you will also be limited to maximum of 500ma of charging current per USB standard. It will be slower than the stock charger (which is slow already).

foxbat121 said:
The phone is actually quite picky about chargers. It can recognize a USB charger in either (1) AC wall charger or (2) USB charger. If your paritular charger can be recognized as AC charger, it can be charged in a faster rate if your wall charger can deliver. The Captivate comes with a 700ma wall charger. Some can deliver 1000ma or even higher but Captivate internally limits to 1000ma max from what I read. The higher the amprage, the faster it can charge the battery.
On the other hand, if your charger is recognized as USB charger, not only you will be prompted to select USB mode (if you configured to do so) as if you connect it to a PC, you will also be limited to maximum of 500ma of charging current per USB standard. It will be slower than the stock charger (which is slow already).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is not "picky" it follows the USB specifications. For instance I have a 4 port USB wall charger that is capable of supplying 5 volts at 2000 mA to one port or 5v @ 500 mA to 4 ports. Unfortunately the charger is not complex enough to know how many devices are plugged in at once and therefore always signals to all devices to only use a maximum of 500 mA. So if those devices follow the specs they will only draw 500 mA max since it is seen as a high current device (low current devices only should draw 100 mA max).
I DO NOT RECOMMEND ANYONE OPEN UP ANY ELECTRICS EVER ESPECIALLY ONES WHEN CONNECTED TO THE AC LINES IN YOUR HOMES. IT IS A FIRE AND ELECTROCUTION RISK AND I NOR ANYONE ELSE TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN STUPIDITY.
However I hacked it by adding a resistor of proper value between the data pins so that the phone if it wanted to could use the full 2000 mA. Know whenever plugged into that USB port the phone goes into AC mode and from some rough testing during the bulk charging phase the phone charges at a rate of 40% per hour instead of the USB modes 20% per hour. With this hack it takes roughly 3 hours to fully charge since the final charging stage of lithium batteries requires the current to slowly be dialed back. Thats a lot better than the USB modes 5 hours.

icedfire101 said:
It is not "picky" it follows the USB specifications.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I say it is picky because without hacking it will only use USB mode for most wall chargers and car chargers out there. It probably won't be any problem for a slow wall charger. But for car charger, 500ma is simply not enough if you also run GPS navigation. The phone uses more than 500ma of juice in that mode. I've to hack my car charger (a 700ma USB charger designed for iPod etc) couple times to let it reliably recognize as AC charger.

foxbat121 said:
I say it is picky because without hacking it will only use USB mode for most wall chargers and car chargers out there. It probably won't be any problem for a slow wall charger. But for car charger, 500ma is simply not enough if you also run GPS navigation. The phone uses more than 500ma of juice in that mode. I've to hack my car charger (a 700ma USB charger designed for iPod etc) couple times to let it reliably recognize as AC charger.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Again that is not "picky" it is doing what it is suppose to. What we really need are companies that will follow the USB standards and make Dedicated Charging Ports on there chargers. Most companies cheap out and only make 500 mA and 700 mA products (which that is why charging is so slow). Then they sell it to consumers that don't know any better. Especially with the 700 mA chargers since consumers will think that it is better because of the bigger number but devices that properly follow the USB spec will still only draw 500 mA. (I don't know what specifications Apple follows with their device but since a lot of those that I see with 700 mA are geared toward apples device they may be able to make use of them.) I know of no open specification for a USB device to pull 700 mA.
As to why the Samsung stock charger that came with the phone is 700 mA, I m guessing it is because of cost again. I can tell you though that it doesn't short the data lines with the proper X ohm resister for a Dedicated Charging Port. So I m thinking they made their own proprietary standard there just so they could save a few bucks on each charger but still give the consumer something to feel good about for buying there overpriced stuff.
I DO NOT RECOMMEND ANYONE OPENING UP ANY ELECTRONICS, EVER. ESPECIALLY ONES CONNECTED TO THE AC LINES IN YOUR HOMES. IT IS A FIRE AND ELECTROCUTION RISK AND I NOR ANYONE ELSE TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN STUPIDITY.
Dedicated Charging Ports are required to supply 1800 mA. That means if you try and hack a device that is only rated at 700 mA to be a Dedicated Charging Port the device will possibly overheat and die or cause a fire if any device actually tries to pull the 1800 mA.
As far as car chargers: It is very simple to make a Dedicated Charging Port for a car charger provided you have an old USB one you can mod. Just get a DC-to-DC converter that will convert 11-14 volts (your car battery's voltage range) to 5 volts and throw a X ohm resistor on the USB data pins. Put it all in the empty shell of the donor and your done.

1 Amp Apple wall charger

Are all of Apple's OEM iPhone wall chargers (the white little square looking one's) rated at 1 amp? They're cheap on eBay and I like their small form factor and want to pick one up for my Captivate. Thx

I use one and they work fine.

^If you have your charger on hand, would you mind checking to see if it outputs 1Amp?

On your phone, go to Settings->About Phone->Status->Battery Status. If it says "Charging (AC)", it is charging at the max amperage the charger can offer (up to 1A). If it says "Charging (USB)", it is only charging at 500mA, the max a PC USB can offer. I'm pretty sure for iPhone/iPod chargers, it will show later case on our phone because it is not wired according to Samsung's AC charging requirement. I knew this because I had a 3rd party Car charger that was designed for iPhone/iPod and it won't let my Captivate to charge in AC charger mode. I have to open the charger and make a few mod myself to let Captivate to recognize this is an AC charger, not PC USB.
On the other hand, my 1A charger from Kodak Zi8 flash cam works w/o problem with Captivate.

foxbat121 said:
On your phone, go to Settings->About Phone->Status->Battery Status. If it says "Charging (AC)", it is charging at the max amperage the charger can offer (up to 1A). If it says "Charging (USB)", it is only charging at 500mA, the max a PC USB can offer. I'm pretty sure for iPhone/iPod chargers, it will show later case on our phone because it is not wired according to Samsung's AC charging requirement.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ty for the reply. I modded a usb retractable cable by shorting the middle connectors and when I go into settings it shows it's "Charging AC". This is with a generic 700mA usb wall charger I got with a cheap connector kit for my old iPhone.
Anyway, I recently got my Captivate and I find myself constantly playing with it, but it kills my battery doing so. I just want to charge my phone as quickly as possible so I can continue playing with it some more (in a good way).
I like Apple's wall charger because it's small.

From what I have read they are rated at 650 mv so fox is right that they will show as a usb connection. I have never really paid attention and am making a relatively uneducated, yet randomly tested, through my own purely subjective method of simply plugging my phone into anything that will allow my usb cord access, guess that anything with a female usb connection is fine.
Li-ion batteries are kinda dangerous so I am pretty sure there is some sort of idiot proofing built into the charging circuitry in the phone as well.

I'm pretty sure the Captivate will only draw the amps it needs so there should be no danger whether the wall charger is 1 or 2 Amps or more.

The difference is simply the charge time. The phone needs about 3 to 4 hours to get a full charge on the stock 700mA charger. When using generic USB chargers, it will be limited to 500mA max regardless what the charger is capable of and the full charge time will be proportionally longer. The bigger problem is that when your battery is really really low, 500mA may not be enough to even start the charging. That's why you need always keep the OEM charger handy for emergency.
BTW, for a car charger, 500mA won't keep your bettery from draining if you run navigation app that needs to power GPS chip, keep the screen on and download map from 3G connection at the same time. It requires 700mA or more. That is why it is very critical for a car charger be recognized by the phone as AC charger to draw more juice.

Ok, as I stated in my previous post I modded a USB cable by shorting the two middle data connectors, which tricks the Captivate into thinking it's charging with AC through my generic 700mA wall charger. It also says in settings it's "AC Charging" when I looked.
I just wanted to know if the iPhone's wall charger is rated at 1A or was it 650mA?? as newter55 stated.
thx for everyone's help.
Edit: My mistake, I thought I posted this in the Q&A section.

For some new PC motherboard with USB3.0,
they can output 900mA~1000mA(1A) in one single USB port.
You may check this out http://goo.gl/TUaef
If your PC is already 2 years old or older, the usb will only output 500mA in the max.
And, most Li-ion charger are smart enough.
In fact Li-ion charger circuit need to be well design in current control and over current/charge control.
The circuit will not pump full current to the battery in the beginning,
and it will not draw too much, so no need to worry about burn it up.
However if the current is too high let's say 10A.... it may possibly burn the circuit.
Maybe it is a bit difficult to measure current, you need to cut the wire and plug it to ampmeter....
Here is some reference.
500mA - full charge need over 3hrs
700mA - around 2hrs
1A - ~1.5 hr

johan8 said:
For some new PC motherboard with USB3.0,
they can output 900mA~1000mA(1A) in one single USB port.
You may check this out http://goo.gl/TUaef
If your PC is already 2 years old or older, the usb will only output 500mA in the max.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is not about USB port side. The phone itself also detects and determines how much current it will draw. If it detects it is a PC USB, it will only draw 500mA max as Captivate is designed following USB 2.0 spec.

Ok, thanks for everyone's help. I was able to find out on my own after scouring the internet and talking to someone who has the Apple wall charger and it is indeed 1Amps. I believe all wall chargers that come with the iPhone 3g and all iPhone models after are 1Amps. Not sure about the original iPhone 2g.
Also, for curiosities sake, the iPad USB wall charger is 2Amps.

foxbat121 said:
It is not about USB port side. The phone itself also detects and determines how much current it will draw. If it detects it is a PC USB, it will only draw 500mA max as Captivate is designed following USB 2.0 spec.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe.
I don't know the control circuit inside GalaxyS.
But USB2.0 doesn't means it is just 500mA.
iphone is just usb2.0, but it is the only thing can draw 1A from USB ?
http://goo.gl/GVqKl
(with designated m/b)

johan8 said:
Maybe.
I don't know the control circuit inside GalaxyS.
But USB2.0 doesn't means it is just 500mA.
iphone is just usb2.0, but it is the only thing can draw 1A from USB ?
http://goo.gl/GVqKl
(with designated m/b)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're missing the point. The charge port on the phone can draw more than 500mA but only if it detects it is connected to a AC charger. Like mentioned above, you have to short the data PINs on the USB port or cable to let the Captivate think it is connected to AC charger. For iPhone, the data pins need to be connected to certain specific voltages in order to let iPhone know it is connected to an Apple AC charger.
When the phone can not detect AC charger characteristics, it falls back to PC USB 2.0 spec which is 500mA max.

I use one to charge my Zune. Haven't had a problem.

foxbat121 said:
You're missing the point. The charge port on the phone can draw more than 500mA but only if it detects it is connected to a AC charger. Like mentioned above, you have to short the data PINs on the USB port or cable to let the Captivate think it is connected to AC charger. For iPhone, the data pins need to be connected to certain specific voltages in order to let iPhone know it is connected to an Apple AC charger.
When the phone can not detect AC charger characteristics, it falls back to PC USB 2.0 spec which is 500mA max.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I fully understand what you're saying.
In iphone3, it can only draw 700mA from USB,
IP4 can draw nearly 1A from "computer" USB.
While iphone are just USB2.0 !
GalaxyS can draw 1A in max.
But does it like iphone4 can draw 1A from PC USB ? I don't know.
Or just like IP3 can draw only 500~700mA ?
I don't have new m/b and ampmeter so can't testing on it.

USB charging on some amps, AC on others

As far as I know, if you plug in your Nexus5 (or any phone) into a power source with high amperage (>1A), your phone should utilize the amps it actually needs to charge at full speed (AC Charging).*
For example, if i plug my Nexus 5 into a 2.1A charger, it will charge just fine and draw only the required amps needed.*
Ive noticed my phone (rooted with faux) and my wifes (stock) and very finicky when it comes to the amps a charger uses. *It appears that if a charger is not exactly 1.0A or 1.2/1.3A, the phone charges as USB and not AC (no matter which USB cable I use). *Below is what I have found out, *with charge type/amp and how the phone sees it
Stock charger (1.2A) - AC
Anker 25W 5-Port Wall charger (1A Android port) - AC
Anker 25W 5-Port Wall charger (1A iPhone port) - USB (not sure why??)
Anker 25W 5-Port Wall charger (1.3A Galaxy Tab Port) - AC
Anker 25W 5-Port Wall charger (2.1A iPad ports) - USB
Anker E4 13000mah battery (2A) - USB
ANker E4 13000mah battery (1A) - AC
Anyone else experience this?
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

What you've observed here actually has nothing to do with the amperage of your ports and everything to do with how their data pins are wired. The N5 (and most other android devices) looks for the data +/- pins in the USB port to be shorted together, this is how it determines it's connected to a charger. Apple devices do this differently, they look for a specific combination of voltages to be present on the data +/- pins. When you connect your N5 to an Apple port, it ignores these voltages and just charges as if it were connected to a PC.
Now the fact that it sees the Galaxy Tab port as a charger is kind of interesting because the Tab uses yet another method for charger detection. It looks for resistors of a specific value connecting the data +/- pins to the power +/- pins. Cool that the N5 recognizes this configuration as well.
Anyway, this is why your Anker charger has ports dedicated to specific devices, each one is configured a little differently.

That would make sense, however, I would expect the same thing on my Nexus 4 but that doesn't happen. It charges as AC for every port
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

It could simply be that the N4 uses a different power control IC from the N5 (they almost certainly do). That and the software controlling the charging determine whether the phone enables AC charging from different ports or not.
I believe (I have not tried this) that some custom kernels have a setting that enables fast charging unconditionally, to draw as much current as the hardware allows.

Yeah I'm waiting for a kernel to support Fast charge, don't believe any do at the moment
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

the phone may revert to lower power usb charging if some condition isn't met... the phone is completely ignorant of the rated power of the wall wart. current is drawn, it depends on ohms.. so it has nothing to do with the "power output." what i mean is there is no situation where too many amps is going to trigger something in the phone, the phone controls the amps and is ignorant of the max the supply can give unless the phone actually exceeds that and detects a voltage drop, the supply can't force more amps without raising voltage to do so but that's just not how these devices work. so it's not because of the amps of the charger, it must be some other aspect.
what the phone can see is voltage. the state of the microusb "Id" pin (which will probably be open if you are using a data cable and not a specific dock to put it in desk mode or car mode, not that i think the n5 has those modes, but the Id pin is what tells the phone these things, as well as set them into download mode to flash them) and the state of the data pins. generally the data pins need to be shorted together to tell the phone to go into ac charging.
it's possible however that if the voltage is lower than 5v, the phone assumes there is voltage drop from too low a power rating on the supply and it's unable to supply the current. in this situation the phone may default to a lower current charging mode. some ac chargers may not go all the way to 5.0v they may put out as low as 4.45v... if the voltage is either low or unstable from the "high output" charger it may cause the phone to think it has exceeded the output rating of the supply when infact it's just getting unclean power. try it with an official tablet charger for a kindle or something and not a store bought anything..... some of the high output chargers just have substandard regulators and/or filtering.
there may also be more to this. usb 3.0 has a higher current rating than usb 2.0 if the phone can detect the type of port it's connected to, that may also determine the charge mode.. (in thoery anyway, no reason it can't work that way, but i can't say i know that it does on any current device)

It's getting pretty aggravating now that my Nexus 5 charges as USB when connected to my anker slim 2 1A external battery as well as my anker astro e4 1A port. No reason why it should do this
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

If you use a fast charging USB cable with the proper pins shorted you should get it to charge with in AC mode. I grabbed one from Amazon and it changed from DC to AC on the same charger.

jalanjkcarp said:
If you use a fast charging USB cable with the proper pins shorted you should get it to charge with in AC mode. I grabbed one from Amazon and it changed from DC to AC on the same charger.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh thanks for that tip. I'll order one on Amazon right now and update this thread
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

What happens if you connect an Apple device to one with the shorted pins?

Earth explodes
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

jalanjkcarp said:
If you use a fast charging USB cable with the proper pins shorted you should get it to charge with in AC mode. I grabbed one from Amazon and it changed from DC to AC on the same charger.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tested the new USB cord on all ports, charges as AC. Thanks a lot
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk