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Fast charging N1

It seems the only way to fast charge a N1 is with the supplied wall charger. Standard Micro USB chargers whould only allow at much as 450mA of charge current regardless of the adapter current capacity.
The bundled charger however, manages to push 900mA into the N1. I made a cut in the charger wires and measured the current draw to make sure.
Now.. I'd like my car charger to be able to do the same. There must be some hack in the plug of the N1 charger since there are only 2 conductors from the case to the plug. You can see that the plug is somewhat longer than similar Micro USB plugs..
So I tried to see if one of the 3 unused pins can tell me anything but.. they seem unconnected as far as I could tell. Diode measurement (to test for any digital part inside) also did not produce any results. The next obvious step is to take the molded plug apart but I'd rather not...
Does anyone have any clue as to what makes that plug so special?
And please - I did my tests with a bench power supply - not the car chargers - so don't go around telling me it has to do with charger current capacity.
Thanks,
Nir

are you sure the micro usb cords you are using are able to handle the amps? most chargers made prior to now, only push about 450mA, the G1, and N1 chargers i have push a full amp though. I just ordered a car charger that pushes an amp too. There is nothing "special" about the plug.

followinginsanity said:
are you sure the micro usb cords you are using are able to handle the amps? most chargers made prior to now, only push about 450mA, the G1, and N1 chargers i have push a full amp though. I just ordered a car charger that pushes an amp too. There is nothing "special" about the plug.
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Click to collapse
I beg to differ. All the cords can easily supply 1 AMP. It is the phone itself that decides how much to draw from the charger based on something IN THE PLUG.
I am an electronics engineer so do understand I know perfectly what I am talking about
And your 1A car charger does not supply anything over 0.45A to the phone.. you will see that if you are using the phone while it charges (say nav or phone call) the phone actually looses some charge albeit it being charged... This will not happen with the stock wall charger.

I have a 900mAh car charger that I use and it does in fact give 900mAh to the phone while charging. I can tell because I used a 450mAh charger at home before and it was slooow and I could drain my phone while charging it. With the car charger I can stream music with spotify, use the GPS, have the screen on full brightness and the battery % will still go up.
I also bought a new wall charger recently, which is 850mAh on the USB port and has a 350mAh charger for a loose battery as well, works quite nice.

Has anyone measured the voltage or put a scope on the output of the stock charger?
maybe stock charger has a slight variance in voltage over USB chargers or some signalling going on and this tells the N1 to take more current from it?
I would like a solution to this too I've seen my phone discharge while on a supposedly 1A car charger using co-pilot.

SBS_ said:
I have a 900mAh car charger that I use and it does in fact give 900mAh to the phone while charging. I can tell because I used a 450mAh charger at home before and it was slooow and I could drain my phone while charging it. With the car charger I can stream music with spotify, use the GPS, have the screen on full brightness and the battery % will still go up.
I also bought a new wall charger recently, which is 850mAh on the USB port and has a 350mAh charger for a loose battery as well, works quite nice.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Forget the numbers on the chargers - what counts is what really goes into the phone and that needs to be measured with a current meter (test equipment). What you may think to be fast might not be that.
Original HTC chargers obviously do the trick of fast charging but this comes at a price compared to the $3-$4 garden variety on Ebay and the likes.

now I cannot help you with the electronics at all, but, my old HTC Touch Pro charger seems to charge the same as the one which came with the phone, is this correct?
(suits me if it is, as then I have a charger for home and work)
my blackberry bold 2 charger only says it outputs 700MAh, but both the google and htc chargers both say 1.0A

dnts said:
Forget the numbers on the chargers - what counts is what really goes into the phone and that needs to be measured with a current meter (test equipment). What you may think to be fast might not be that.
Original HTC chargers obviously do the trick of fast charging but this comes at a price compared to the $3-$4 garden variety on Ebay and the likes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, it is just anecdotal evidence as I don't have any equipment to measure it. But my phone no longer discharges when I use it while charging, which it used to do with the old charger I used. So while I can say for a fact that the charger I use now is faster, I can't say by how much (this goes for both the car charger and the one I put in the wall socket).

I ordered this charger a few weeks ago and it charges my phone as fast as the original charger. The label says 5v / 1200mA.
Genuine Nokia Mini AC-10U US Type AC Charger (100~240V)
$7,25 and free shipping. (Takes a while before you get it tho.)
GazzaK said:
now I cannot help you with the electronics at all, but, my old HTC Touch Pro charger seems to charge the same as the one which came with the phone, is this correct?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
HTC Touch Pro = mini USB
Nexus One = micro USB

Not an engineering here, but I am guessing the phone not always drawing more than 500ma may be is to do with the charger itself.
There is this "fast charge" USB standard where a wall plug has the USB data pins shorted to indicate that it is a wall plug and hence the phone knows when to draw more power. So even if the charger is rated 1A, the phone might not know if it could utilize that if those pins aren't shorted. Try doing a quick Google on this ....
If someone can test if the stock charger that came with the phone in fact does have those pins shorted that would confirm part of this theory.

For all practical purpose - I used two cables/plugs with a bench adjustable power supply. Simple micro USB plug would only let me draw 450mA regardless of power supply voltage in the range 4.5-5.5V. Tried shorting data pins - nothing. Tried shorting spare pin to VCC or GND or any of the other pins - nothing.
Used original cable and plug - draws 900mA at voltages from 4.9-5.5.
So it's in the plug somehow.
Tried (very difficult) to see if the pins on the plug are shorted and all 3 spares (except for 5V and GND) seems unconnected.
Next step is the irreversible hot knife...

I'm bugged by this, too. I tested with my desktop dock connected to my car charger (which states 1000 mA): it loads slowly and my battery widget reports USB- instead of AC-charger.
Might it be that the phone tries to load more than 1000 mA at the beginning to be sure that it doesn't overload the charger? And if that fails, it falls back to 500 mA?

Could N1 use a simple logic of:
- always watch the voltage
- start drawing 500ma (or whichever is the lowest current as per USB spec)
- increment in say 50ma steps
- if voltage drops below 4.x V, back off and stay at that level

I just did a little test of my own. I have a Palm Pre car charger (actual Palm brand one labeled as 1000ma output) and I plunged my N1 into it on my way home from work. In twenty eight minutes, my battery went from 47% to 70%. Much faster than plugging into my computer, which is 500ma max. I don't have any fancy test equipment, and don't claim to know a whole lot about electronics, but seems pretty fast to me.

I have a 4-port 2A 5v USB charger, and connecting it to my Nexus OR Milestone with a MicroUSB cable (the one that shipped with either phone, or the one from my Kindle) yields painfully slow charging - it basically won't charge if you are using the phone.
Connecting the Nexus One charger yields fast charging on either phone - so it is not HTC (or Motorola) proprietary.
The Milestone comes with a 900mA USB plug, and connecting THAT to either phone with either of the MicroUSB cables yields fast charging.
I have another aftermarket 2 port 2A 5V USB wall charger (brand: T'nB) AND I have an iPhone USB plug, and both give fast charging on the Milestone, and I have not yet tried them on the Nexus One.
Breakdown (on things I've tried):
FAST CHARGING on Nexus One AND Milestone:
Nexus charger (either in the US (110v/60hz) or in France (220v/50hz) through an adaptor)
Milestone wall French USB plug (which I think is something odd like 850mA at 5.9v) with ANY microUSB cable (in fact, it seems to charge both of the phones faster than the stock Nexus One plug)
SLOW CHARGING on Nexus One AND Milestone:
USB plug on computer
One aftermarket 4 port 2A 5V USB charger (NOT a hub, only a charger)
FAST CHARGING on Milestone, untested with Nexus One
T'nB 2 port 5v 2A USB wall charger
Apple iPhone 1 port 1A 5v USB wall adaptor

Seems found the answer for Fast Charging N1
I had just do some test for Charging N1 With Original AC Charger , Other band USB Charger and PC USB charger.
1. Orginal Charger give N1 from 0% to 100% at about 2 hour and something.
2. The other band AC charger and PC USB Charger can only finish the same job over 5 to 6 hours.
The Fast Charging is Due to 5.1V (Measured at N1) and 5.2V(Measured inside AC charger). 0.1V Drop is due to resistance of USB cable.
The Slow charged is due to 4.8V (measured at N1) and 5.0V (measured on PC USB and Other AC Charger)
i.e. Original Charger mod from 5.0 V to 5.2V (about 10% increase in Voltage)

Looks my theory is correct then ? N1 watches the voltage and if it droops too much, it backs off the current.
So the key would be: get a charger than can maintain at least 1A @ 5.2V, use
a decent gauge, short wire from the brick to N1.

Has anyone tried a Blackberry charger on the N1? Will they work to full capacity as well? (They're on Amazon for a fiver)

Because the nokia charger is working
http://pinoutsguide.com/CellularPhones-Nokia/micro_usb_connector_pinout.shtml
see info under table.
I tested also HP charger + standard USB cable delivered with Nexus, and it is charching cca 1A.
Then I tested one noname Carcharger + standard USB cable delivered with Nexus, and also charging cca 1A.
I dismantle the noname carcharger and here is a result:
data line (pin2+3) is shorted and connected do + (pin1 ,Vcc) thrue resistor cca 630kOhm.
1 - 4 = 5.1V
2,3 - 4 = 3.2V
rashid11 said:
Looks my theory is correct then ? N1 watches the voltage and if it droops too much, it backs off the current.
So the key would be: get a charger than can maintain at least 1A @ 5.2V, use
a decent gauge, short wire from the brick to N1.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I try to use power supply 5.2V 2A with cable without dataline (pin 2and3 not connected) and it is charging 480mA only.

I have now tested with an HTC car charger for the HD2. It's fast charging (tested with Waze running, two bluetooth connections and playing mp3 - and it's still loading the battery, whereas before it would be stuck at the current percentage) and even shows AC power instead of USB.

[Q] DHD Micro-USB Charging question

So my DHD arrives tomorrow.
After reading about battery life, I want access to as many chargers as possible.
Can you tell me: Will my existing Micro-USB Chargers (Blackberry) be compatible with the DHD? I'm not sure if each unit will require a specific voltage / wattage?
Or can I just plug & play with which ever Micro-USB charger I come across?
Thank you & sorry if it's a dumb question...

Any cable will do fine. Definitely if you're charging through a PC since I've never heard of a phone/battery that can't handle the 5V it outputs (max for USB charging). A mains charger you can never be too sure with since it may have higher current/watt output, but I've really never let this stop me except that I'd avoid using cheap Chinese knockoffs.

It depends... microUSB connected to computer will be of course good, as it is hardware limited to 0,5A. External chargers are good question, but in my experience the phone/battery usually have a charge limiter so even if the charger does allow you to use higher current, the phone doesn't have to use all the power it can get.
For example i used the Nokia AC-10E charger for my Motorola Milestone since i bough the phone, and had no problems with it. And will use it for DHD too.

The official HTC chargers have an outpur of 5V/1A, so as long as your charger has the same output you should be good.

Nokia AC-10E has 1.2A, but as i said - that is the maximum it can give to the phone, batteries/phones have a current regulators so even if you connect a charger which can give you 2A @ 5V, nothing will happen - the phone will regulate the current which is used to charge the battery.

[Q] got a generic charger....it says-5v 500mah,original is 5v 1a(amper)is this ok?

it says- output :5v 500mah
the original says-output:5v 1a(amper i guess)
will this screw up the battery?

chances are no, considering it is half what htc recommends you charge it with, either it will charge it very slowly (half the current of the original) or the voltage wont provide enough to kick the phone into charging mode and nothing will happen (i.e. the charger "wont work")

Thanks for the help

It'll work, but as panyan said, it'll recharge much more inefficiently than with a 1 amp charger.

Actually... It will charge the phone exactly as charging via USB, as USB is limited to 0.5A.

Yep, it will charge your phone just fine @ USB charging speed, I have a similar charger.

And some of you forgot to mention that the phone will struggle when for example you will play games or use gps. Charge will be insufficient and instead charging it will slowly discharge while using it.
Sent from my Desire HD uing XDA App

Well yes and no, in normal usage it will charge phone, but when you use your phone the way that you would drain the batty in two hours, then it will discharge.

Hey... Yeah if the charger is a car charger then it may not charge fast enough if using GPS software which can drain the battery fast. 1Amp reccomended for faster charging... other than that should charge fine but just slow like USB charging (which has a max of 500mA).
One question guys... I bought a car charger from ebay listed as for HTC phones. It looks like a cheap knock off product with a glowing blue HTC logo when used in the car. The device is rated at 2Amps. Now from what little I know about electronics I've been told that AC/DC Plug packs with more Amps are ok and the device just only uses what it needs. I'm not however familiar whith battery charing when you have a higher rated Amps charger... Would the battery on the phone just be greedy and "ask" for the full 2Amps? Would this then put strain or be dangerous by charging the phone too quickly?
Secondly while we are on the topic of electronics... I'm trying out a super cheap ebay battery supposedly rated at 1600mAH (I know these rating are usually fake). I've noticed the HTC battery is around 4.17V when fully charged. This battery charged up to 4.2V fully charged... Is that dangerous for the device?

2 amp is better, correct me if i am wrong. So the output is 5V and 2A, is that mean the power is 10W every hour ?

2 A charging current (if the phone takes in that much) will damage the battery in a long term use.

It is incredibly unlikely that the phone will discharge the battery faster than it charges unless you're doing something very wrong, e.g. Running a console emulator while downloading a large file over HSDPA with WiFi enabled (but not connected) and using GPS navigation with screen brightness at maximum!
Screen and background services take approx 150mAh, and I doubt radio will take much more than that combined. That puts drain 200mAh less than USB charging, 700mAh less than direct charging.
FYI: There's a spec for USB charging of mobile phones from supported USB ports which can pull up to 1500mA.

DeathJester said:
It is incredibly unlikely that the phone will discharge the battery faster than it charges unless you're doing something very wrong, e.g. Running a console emulator while downloading a large file over HSDPA with WiFi enabled (but not connected) and using GPS navigation with screen brightness at maximum!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm... not sure for Desire HD I haven't tested GPS with SatNav software using current widget... I do know that I'm pulling well over 200mA just with basic use at home with Wi-Fi on and GPS & Bluetooth off and I kill all backround apps. I do know that I've been in the car and seen TomTom app on my friend's jailbroken iPhone 3G (or 3Gs) and with the GPS on and not doing anything intensive... we were actually travelling down a long straight highway, the phone was chewing more battery than the car charger could charge, so he switched off GPS.
Ah also guys no need to worry about the 2Amp charger... It sh*t itself on the 3rd car use and no longer works at all. Junk! I also noticed on the 2nd car trip that opening Android SpareParts the charge is displayed as USB Charging not AC Charging so yeah I believe that the car charger was only a standard USB (max 500mA) power output and not 1Amp let alone 2Amps. Annoying how false advertising or labelling is part and parcel with cheap Chinese products.I was meaning to test the charger's output with Current Widget (which is what I'll do for my next car charger) but the charger crapped out and was useless before I got a chance.
One thing I did notice from looking at a log using Current Widget while charging my phone on the A/C charger in standby, the charge tapers off the power output the more the battery is charged. To get an accurate idea of if the car charger is going to be outputting 1Amp I'd be sure the phone battery is down to 40% (or in the 40s) then with all other stuff switched off I'd run a log on Current Widget and turn the screen off for a few minutes. You should have a reading of around +700 to +800mA if the car charger is rated at 1Amp.
Be wary of the cheap Asian knock of car chargers with the coil spring cord and the HTC logo that lights up blue.... Not worth the 3 or 4 bucks they sell on ebay for.
There's a spec for USB charging of mobile phones from supported USB ports which can pull up to 1500mA.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's commonly those double USB cables for laptop hard drives so yeah I can see that if the USB ports are actually giving you the full rated maximum of 500mA you can get 1Amp output with this kind of cable but 1500mA?!? The only way I'd see possible for this is either you have a tripple USB cable connected to 3USB ports that are all outputting the full 500mA (and that's if a triple cable even exists or lets say you solder another one onto a double cable) or you have a USB AC/DC charger or some other USB port/hub you've rigged up which provides more than the USB standards of max 500mA per port. How else is this possible?!? Has the max power output of 500mA changed since USB 2.0 standards?

yeah there are usb 2.0 ports with more than 500mA power supply.
some companys give some extra juice to their (or often only one) usb ports.
for example: i've got an Dell Studio XPS 16 Notebook here. it has 3 usb ports, 2 with normal 500mA supply and one with 1A (for charging your phone, etc).
DN41

[Q] Will any micro usb work?

I am thinking about ordering this:
http://www.amazon.com/G2x-T-Mobile-..._24?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1304350783&sr=1-24
But was wondering if I should spend the money and get a LG issued micro usb and car charger.
Anyone have experience with these chargers?

Hmmm that's alot of stuff for such a cheap price. Makes me wonder the build quality of that stuff. I might stay away from that. Just my opinion though. But to answer your question, I use a micro-usb cable I got from newegg. I also use the car charger I got with my MyTouch Slide a year ago.

First thing I thought was "too good to be true" and in my experience cheap stuff brakes stuff.

Yeah I think the quality of those accessories is probably quite low. If you want a good micro-usb cable I ordered 3 of these about a year ago and still use them today and they work fine on the G2x for data transfer and charging:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&cm_re=micro_usb_cable-_-12-189-164-_-Product

I still have my micro usb charger I used for my blackberry curve (2 yrs old). I would assume that would work. I wonder if the old wall charger would work as well.

Those chargers are pretty much worthless. You need a high amp charger. The phone comes with a 1amp or 1000mA charger. If you buy a cheap charger that's 500mA for example you take more time to charge your phone. If the charger is really weak then you might not charge at all or even drop you battery levels while connected and using your gps in your car.
Note these are Blackberry and Motorolla OEM products that will work with your G2X. I use these and they are fine. They are both under $5 each at Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/BlackBerry-Fo...PN0S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1304613708&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-Vehi...Q9CA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1304613757&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/BlackBerry-Cable-Micro-1-0m-Black/dp/B001QATRCA/ref=zg_bs_wireless_10
Cheap doesn't mean bad. All that stuff costs nothing to make anyways.

I buy stuff like that all the time off amazon.com.
I buy stuff like that all the time off amazon.com.
I can tell you you get what you pay for.
I buy stuff like that for coworkers and everthing is still working fine except car chargers breaking because of rough handling of the chargers. Evething else is alive and kicking.
If you decide to get it let me know how the car charger, Charges the phone, and make sure to post pictures because some times picture are diffrent from what is posted on the web.

I personally got this charger from T-Moble (granted, it was $30), 4.8v 1A... and integrated it into my car:
Code:
http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/AddOns/Accessories/AccessoryDetailPopUp.aspx?accessory=f2105fae-0bb1-47f2-b53b-a8acc9e98c56&inCart=True&catCode=-1
I removed the LED since it's hardwired to the car.
Grated, if you want to move the charger from car to car it's not ideal to hard-wire it... but eh.

Be careful what you buy.
I ordered a Micro-USB cable from an Amazon vendor. It was the one in this package:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004XGBBY6
Package seemed good enough. Good deal. The case was serviceable (I won't use it fulltime, but for what I paid, I wasn't expecting much-- it's good for putting my phone in for when it's in the car, sitting on the dash, so that it doesn't slide around while I get GPS maps). The car charger works pretty well. But the USB cable...
I was experiencing battery drain from my phone while it was plugged into my desktop PC's USB with the aftermarket cable.
The next day I tried it with the one that shipped with my phone from LG and it works just fine.
For reals, has anyone experienced battery drain with an aftermarket cable while it was plugged in?

eatabagel said:
Be careful what you buy.
I ordered a Micro-USB cable from an Amazon vendor. It was the one in this package:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004XGBBY6
Package seemed good enough. Good deal. The case was serviceable (I won't use it fulltime, but for what I paid, I wasn't expecting much-- it's good for putting my phone in for when it's in the car, sitting on the dash, so that it doesn't slide around while I get GPS maps). The car charger works pretty well. But the USB cable...
I was experiencing battery drain from my phone while it was plugged into my desktop PC's USB with the aftermarket cable.
The next day I tried it with the one that shipped with my phone from LG and it works just fine.
For reals, has anyone experienced battery drain with an aftermarket cable while it was plugged in?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well typically USB doesn't have enough juice to power the phone while you are using it. It might in some cases but with WiFi, the screen, GPS, or whatever... you probably won't be charging the battery much if at all, and in fact might be losing power.
The same with USB chargers. The better chargers provide more power where most only provide the standard 5v (just like a desktop) so with heavy usage (GPS, screen, bluetooth) you might not gain anything.
I'm not sure about PC's because computers follow the standard of 5v and I don't think they will send more over the cable. A bad cable will have more resistance and probably not do as good of a job but overall should work.
The answer is any microUSB cable will work because it is a standard. Chargers (home and car) should provide more power to give it a faster charge.
Some Chargers are able to do "fast-charges" which I know the G2x can handle. I have a Microsoft Zune charger and it devastates my battery charge times. I'll be full in like 30min.
Typically batteries like a slow progressive charges though, which seem to last the longest. Oddly enough, I get the best battery life by charging my phone via my USB port on my Cable Box (haha).

As long as the charger's output is 5V then you're good. The higher the milliamp output on the charger the faster yourphone will charge.
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App

player911 said:
Well typically USB doesn't have enough juice to power the phone while you are using it. It might in some cases but with WiFi, the screen, GPS, or whatever... you probably won't be charging the battery much if at all, and in fact might be losing power.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My phone charges just fine when I'm using while connected to my computer via USB.
It's the amperage that counts when it comes to filling up your battery. I've used .5, .6, .8 and 1 amp wall adapter and car chargers. The 1 amp charges much faster but, if I remember my USB spec, that's all that was allowed until Apple came along PCs are typically restricted to 500 milliamps (.5 amp) so it's a little slower but still enough to charge it., even under use. I suppose if you have GPS seeking satellites and the display turned up all the way you may draw more than 500 milliamps but I'd be surprised.
EDIT: if you're really interested in this stuff, check http://batteryuniversity.com/ and https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#Power

Skyrocket can't function as GPS Navigator?

This weekend I went on a trip and decided to try out using my Skyrocket as a GPS navigator using Google Navigation. I had my phone mounted and plugged in the whole time for about a 2 hour trip. The screen was on the whole time usually at high brightness (it would dim every once in a while.) When I removed my phone from the mount I noticed the power was down to the low 60's, which struck me as slightly odd since it was plugged into the charger the whole time. The next day I tried to use it as a GPS system again, but even as it was plugged in, this time I literally saw the battery gauge draining. When I turned off navigation and the screen the phone would finally start charging.
Is this a common thing or is there an issue with my phone or possibly my charger? Does doing all those things really drain the battery faster than it can charge it? One last note is that I was not in an LTE area during this, or at least not the whole time (I only noticed it was LTE at one time during the trip.) When I saw my battery draining in front of me I definitely was not in an LTE area.

Might be your charger. I'm having no problems using it as my primary driving, hiking and general outdoor GPS unit. When on car charger, it's charging faster then it drains.

I believe my charger is an old Motorola car charger that came with my wife's old dumbphone. It's actually not even a Micro-USB charger, but rather a Mini-USB with an adapter.
This may be a dumb question, but the actual charging port shouldn't be the issue right? I'm assuming those are always the same standard.

Check the car charger amperage output. I have an old car charger to USB that only puts out 750mA and another thats puts out 1A. Anything less than 1A with the navigation running (which means the screen and GPS stay on, of course), and it'll still drain the battery (and even at 1A it may still drain).
I've been putting off getting a powerful enough car charger myself. You'll need one that puts out 1-2A I would think. Most of the common ones off the shelf are 1A or less, and I've heard that some chargers reported max output is not as good as reported.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727

jslanger said:
Check the car charger amperage output. I have an old car charger to USB that only puts out 750mA and another thats puts out 1A. Anything less than 1A with the navigation running (which means the screen and GPS stay on, of course), and it'll still drain the battery (and even at 1A it may still drain).
I've been putting off getting a powerful enough car charger myself. You'll need one that puts out 1-2A I would think. Most of the common ones off the shelf are 1A or less, and I've heard that some chargers reported max output is not as good as reported.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i second this...my phone won't even charge on some wall chargers, unless 700mAh or higher. let alone do any battery heavy functions like GPS. get something with at least 1a output

I'll try swapping the chargers. I have an overpriced AT&T one that I got for free that is collecting dust.

If the charger has 1A output then it should be OK

I'm having the same problem with my Skyrocket and cheapy charger that I bought at Fry's. Use the navigation with screen on and my battery is less than when I plugged it in.
Going to buy this combo 2A and 1A charger.
http://www.amazon.com/GTMax-2-Port-..._1_5?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1329796381&sr=1-5

Its the amount of mah your charger is putting out. Not the phone. The charger is not supplying enough power
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using Tapatalk

CZ Eddie said:
I'm having the same problem with my Skyrocket and cheapy charger that I bought at Fry's. Use the navigation with screen on and my battery is less than when I plugged it in.
Going to buy this combo 2A and 1A charger.
http://www.amazon.com/GTMax-2-Port-..._1_5?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1329796381&sr=1-5
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When I was looking for a more powerful option, I saw that one on Amazon as well. My only hesitation at buying it was why it was so much cheaper than all comparable options at local stores, or even online...I've heard that the cheapie chargers may not actually output what they say...though for $4 plus shipping, I guess it's not much of a gamble. Let us know how it performs!
P.S.-Pulled up the reviews...not too many positive ones (though 1 or 2 were good): http://www.amazon.com/GTMax-2-Port-...iewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

Its actually more than just the charger output that is a problem. If the center two pins on the USB connection aren't shorted, the phone will treat it as a USB connection to a computer, not an AC connection from the wall, and only draw a max 500mah. I had bought a 1amp and 2 amp charger for my car and would get the same results as the 500. I started to think it was my car limiting my output!
But I then found an article detailing this problem that I've since lost the link to, but the method worked. Pop open the charger and solder the 2 middle connectors together and all is good.
I don't know why the charger manufacturers don't know this... Or maybe this phone is doing something new? Maybe someone makes a USB-> micro USB with the center pair shorted in cable?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using Tapatalk

Just Google "Solder USB Car Charger" and you'll find plenty of tutorials about how to do that. Personally I'd rather just buy one that out of the box works.

Tried out my AT&T charger (which can be found here) and it worked perfectly. Set up the GPS and everything and now it will charge even while doing all that stuff. Thanks for the help

I have the same issue with my SkyRocket. LTE makes no difference. If I'm using Google Navigation or Waze and the Screen is on my charger/phone can't keep up with the battery drain. If I turn the screen off and keep the GPS app running the battery either doesn't drain or doesn't drain as fast.
I've checked my car charger and it's one of those dual usb ones, with a 1 amp port and a 2.1 amp port. It has no indication of which port is which, so I don't know what port I'm using at any particular time. I've tried both and the effects are the same.
Regardless, when the phone is plugged in to that charger the phone reports that it's an AC charger. Supposedly that means I'm getting at least 1 amp, right? So why is 1 amp not enough?
I don't like the car charger you guys suggested because it has the curly cord. I'd rather use a car charger that doesn't come with a cable so I can plug in my own usb cable.
Any suggestions?