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[Q] Can't charge from Computer USB cable

Hey all,
I often charged my g1 through a USB cable from my computer (rather than from the wall). When I do this for the g2x, it doesn't seem to charge. It either retains it's charge, slowly discharges (more slowly than if it wasn't plugged in), or if I am using an intensive app (e.g. pocket legends) it will keep discharging quickly. Is this normal or is this just me/my phone?
I am using the cable that came with the phone that I also use to charge through the wall (so not a cable issue).
Thx

It charges fine through my computer but keep in mind it will be a slower charge on any device. Maybe it's more slow than it should be on yours.

davem666 said:
Hey all,
I often charged my g1 through a USB cable from my computer (rather than from the wall). When I do this for the g2x, it doesn't seem to charge. It either retains it's charge, slowly discharges (more slowly than if it wasn't plugged in), or if I am using an intensive app (e.g. pocket legends) it will keep discharging quickly. Is this normal or is this just me/my phone?
I am using the cable that came with the phone that I also use to charge through the wall (so not a cable issue).
Thx
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you try using other USB ports on your computer?

I've tried multiple ports and multiple computers (not multiple cables cause I only have 1, but the cable does charge through the wall adapter). I've left it plugged in to the computer for the past 2 hours with minimal use (basically just checking battery monitor occasionally) and I am losing ~2% charge an hour (I'll post a screen-cap after a few more hours of "charging").

mine charges.. very slow.

You should never charge your phone from a computer usb cable. There isn't enough amps to charge your phone while it is on and running. If you play games or listen to music while connected and charging from your computer's usb cable you will still run down the battery. The charger that came with the LG G2x is 1Amp or 1000MA! My previous Samsung Galaxy was around 700MA. Best way to charge your phone is to turn it off while it is plugged to the AC adaptor and use a high amp output charger like the stock charger. If you use generic ones with lower amp output like 500Ma, it will take longer.

grenademasta said:
You should never charge your phone from a computer usb cable. There isn't enough amps to charge your phone while it is on and running. If you play games or listen to music while connected and charging from your computer's usb cable you will still run down the battery. The charger that came with the LG G2x is 1Amp or 1000MA! My previous Samsung Galaxy was around 700MA. Best way to charge your phone is to turn it off while it is plugged to the AC adaptor and use a high amp output charger like the stock charger. If you use generic ones with lower amp output like 500Ma, it will take longer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The chargers for the gs and g2x both have the same amps. And Hz.
Where did you find that info?
Sometimes I still use my gs charger on myg2x. Both charge in the same amount of time.
But if it is true ill stop that right now.
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA Premium App

[Q] Power Usage While Plugged In

Currently using BuoyAOSPsy v131 ROM
I have noticed that my battery still drains while I am plugged in and the phone indicates it is plugged in. Have not tested this while plugged into a wall jack, only in my car or via USB to computer.
When this occurs I am using GPS/Navigation software, active data connection (ofc), and playing music.
Does USB or car adapter not supply enough "juice" for this phone to run multiple applications/features? Is there anything I can do to remedy this, such as try a different car adapter? What specs do I need to look for to ensure appropriate power transfer?
Thanks!
**@ Moderators: Hopefully I placed this in the correct forum. Since it is not necessarily directly related to the ROM I thought it should be kept out of the ROM's thread.

Yes you can easily draw more power then its supplying when using computer or car charger. Most of the time its only charging 500 ma when charging that method. Wall charger's I believe are 1000 ma. Navagation is a HUGE draw on battery.

u921333 said:
Yes you can easily draw more power then its supplying when using computer or car charger. Most of the time its only charging 500 ma when charging that method. Wall charger's I believe are 1000 ma. Navagation is a HUGE draw on battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for the info. Guess I'll just have to find a higher quality car adapter.

Actually ive read when using a data cable ie stock or regular micro usb cable on a usb port on your pc or a regular charger the max it will get is 500ma. one of the oem wall chargers (block with usb port) is able to supply 1000ma and the phone is only able to sense this the data pin + and - are shorted together. this tells the phone its charging ac plugged vs usb. now check the output of your car charger and if its able to supply more than 500ma then you can either short pins 2-3 on your cable or on your charger and you will get maximum current draw. Research it you ill there was an article posted on xda somwhere.

I'm getting 1000ma from both my ccar charger and AC adapter. u don't want to pin short a cable and charge from usb. drawing that much power will damage the port, it wasn't designed for that (1.0,2.0). USB 3.0, on the other hand :-D

[TUT]Fast Charging via USB port MOD

Anyone wanting to know how to fast charge using the usb port on your pc/laptop?
This usually takes ages compared to charging via mains lead, the hack itself is quite simple and involves modifying the usb cable
my results are as follows (these can vary depending on what you are using your phone for, what background apps running, etc.
charging with mains lead :
4.2v
998mah
mains ac
charging with STANDARD usb lead:
422mah
3.999v
standard usb
and finally the MODIFIED usb lead hack:
4.161v
782mah
usb hack
as you can see it is a 53% increase in charging compared to standard usb charging mah, and slightly under mains ac charging mah,
as my phone is always plugged in at my work pc or home pc or laptop or whatever this works out good
TUT:
use at your own risk this is for information purposes only and I hold no responsibility to any damage that may arise
using a micro usb cable (charging cable for htc phones)
cut it using a pliers half way through the cable
using pliers again cut away the thick black wiring, the red and black small wiring, and white and green wiring
from the usb port end to the microusb connect the black and red cables together so they join
from the microusb end short out the white and green cables together
from the usb port end leave the white and green cables, do not touch these
use insulation tape/solder to clean it up and then your cable is ready
I will make a mod for car chargers also soon
see attached image showing which wires to cut and which to join up and which to leave alone, if this helped you in anyway (it should help you ) then please hit the thanks button
this mod will trick your pc/laptop/htc into thinking that it is not a pc usb cable and will allow higher currents and voltage to your phone
you can check this with current widget from market place
once this mod is done, you cannot use the same cable again for pc/usb tethering or usb disk drive, only cable can be used for charging

Care to explain how you did it? I got a spare Micro USB cable willing to try and make a tutorial with pictures.

So you forgot to put the directions for the mod...
Sent from my Sensation 4g using XDA App

directions are up with a picture

Seems awesome, but I'd be way too scared to try that on my own. >.<

First of all im not against this mod. Just want to share my experience just this morning.
I charge my phone via the stock usb cable to my pc and leave until morning approx 7hrs. What happen now my phone Menu button become unresponsive tried different method, shake google for answer , but nothing work. Worst come to worse i may return the phone to HTC for repair. So for anyone want to try this be careful, this could be a problem with HTC as it could result more problem.
HTH

Sounds dangerous and a bit risky. Why not just use a USB y cable and a micro USB adapter?
http://item.mobileweb.ebay.com.au/viewitem?itemId=370586078337

Its not dangerous nor risky in my opinion...
I am using this trick since I owned HTC TYTN2 and I`m using it now.

Hmmm...
I always thought the different voltages came from the charging adaptor..
The phone adaptors have normal charging voltages so thats why charge normal speed... however PCs have lesser voltage due to USB ports. I think the PC voltage varies on the device that's plugged in.
Thus, we can use the same cable for charging with an adaptor and also for data transfer and the phone knows what its plugged into.
Pardon me if i'm wrong... could be a misconception i had

Why go to that bother when you can just plug in the adaptor!
Sent from my Sensation using Tapatalk

thunderskain said:
Hmmm...
I always thought the different voltages came from the charging adaptor..
The phone adaptors have normal charging voltages so thats why charge normal speed... however PCs have lesser voltage due to USB ports. I think the PC voltage varies on the device that's plugged in.
Thus, we can use the same cable for charging with an adaptor and also for data transfer and the phone knows what its plugged into.
Pardon me if i'm wrong... could be a misconception i had
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's got nothing to do with the voltages, they are the same. The phone senses that the data wires are not connected together (open) and presumes that it is plugged into a pc / laptop usb port. Because of this the phone then restricts the current it draws from it's source so that it doesn't cause damage to the pc / laptop usb power supply.
Inside the phone charger the data connections will be shorted out so the phone knows it's the charger and can draw full current.
There is a chance that it could damage the pc / laptop if the usb port supply is not rated high enough

Just to update the thread, I've been using this for the last year and a half on all the HTC's I own and no issue at all,
I can connect my phone to my laptop if i dont have access to mains
I can use the cable in the car to a usb charger (which charge slow for some reason)
there are many reasons i.e. in work where I can only use a usb port and no extra plugs for a/c, it means I don't have to carry a plug around with me just a usb cable,

A good post, the issues around drawing to much power could effect older laptops
If I understand correctlly USB3 has the ability to supply more power than USB 2
Anyone any idea if this would reduce charge times without the mod?

battery will die soon enough...

you should place a 220 Ohm resistor between the data lines (green and white) if you do that, you will be able to use the where it was intended for, data
with the 200~220 Ohm resistor the phone recognizes the connection as AC-charger. i dit this with a DealExtreme carcharger
source: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Upgradi...-current-to-HTC-Hero-and-other-devices/5172/1
If you can get to the ID-pin of the USB-connector (pin4) and connect the following resistors to GND, you get interesting USB modes
Dock-mode = 44-49 kOhms
Car-dock = 5-16 kOhms
source: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1185431

I've done this, and soldered all the cables in the right positions, now I'm testing the charge times between this and a normal usb cable on my HTC G1.
First thing I noticed was that my phone says charging via AC, instead of usb.
Will edit this with the results.
Edit : Been a while, forgot about this, so I forget the exact numbers, but my phone charged around 1 and half hours faster with this mod, and yes, it was on USB 3.0 so its quite good.

Worthless to try if you don't have USB 3.0.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium

Does this mod increase charge with main AC lead that output 2A e.g. Ipad charger head???

usb3 provides up to 900ma
so usb3 should work without any problems
this is usb specification
http://www.usr.com/education/peripherals0.asp
by default usb2 provides 500ma unless it is asked for more by the device, this is where the mod of the cable comes into play, it provides up to 1000ma with this mod

johnerz said:
If I understand correctlly USB3 has the ability to supply more power than USB 2
Anyone any idea if this would reduce charge times without the mod?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have an Notebook with USB3.0 and also Power-USB. (Power usb only works with a dockingstation).
The charging is also bad. Takes about ~4 hours from 2% - 100%.
I thought about power reducement by phone, when dataconnection is available. Now I know it for sure :-/

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

charging mi4c through pc very slow or not charging at all?

i tried 3 different usb type-c cable including the one that came with the phone and it barely charges through pc or usb. i would plug it in at around 20% to my pc and 30-40mins later its at 20%.......... is this norm for everyone? its kind of frustrating when i do not have charger with me all the time
is it the cable problem? please help me out here

PC USB outlets do not give you enough current to charge today's smartphones. You need to use a wall charger with the right voltage and amp.
Sent from my Mi-4c using xda premium

Ur pc will never charge it as fast as the charger does. However, your motherboard may have a software which speeds up charging. I have a gigabyte mobo and its soft named "on/off charger".

Its pretty much as the others have said. If the phone charges fine from a wall socket, Its most likely a PC problem.
Smart phones need a lot of power to charge them, usually 1+ amp
But, most PC USB ports (USB 2.0) will only give out 0.5 amp, so 'if' they charge it, it will be very slowly.
A PC with a USB 3.0 port should charge it fine, but not as quick as a wall charger, especially if it has a 'Quick Charge' feature.