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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.
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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!
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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.

[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!
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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.
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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

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
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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?

[Q] Charging Too Slow Now

I have had my Verizon Galaxy S4 since February of this year. I've been using the stock Samsung AC charger that came with it. It's always charged the phone pretty fast if I wasn't using the phone. It would charge about 15% in 20 minutes. Now it's only charging about 3 or 4% in 20 or 30 minutes. Now I didn't do anything different to my phone. I've been on this same ROM for over a month and this is just now a problem in the last week. My wife has the exact phone and charger that I have and when I use her charger it charges just as rapidly as mine used to, so I know it's not the usb port on my phone itself. I haven't dropped or damaged my charger at all in any way either.
Does anyone have any ideas about why this is happening?

If it charges fast on you wife's charger you've pretty much answered your own question.
Try using her cable with your charger, if it still charges slow then get a new charger.

gadget! said:
If it charges fast on you wife's charger you've pretty much answered your own question.
Try using her cable with your charger, if it still charges slow then get a new charger.
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Ok, I'll give that a shot. Thanks.

I had the same problem too ! Did a full battery reset and everything is going good now !
You have to charge it for 12 hours and drain your battery until your phone don't boot. Charge it and here you are !

Yeah these devices act funky every blue moon. My wifes didn't even recognize ANY oem charger for a week. Only detected others as USB devices causing slow charge rate. Removing dust, component cleaner, fresh install, all did no good. Eventually it just resolved the issue itself. All chargers work normally again.

change the usb cables
I also had the same problem before. I'd been using the original charger and usb cable and noticed that charging takes a lot of time than normal.
I found that it's on the usb cable. I accidentally found it when I used gsam battery monitor. It displays the current being received by your phone when charging. Using the original usb cable, it only gets around 600mah. I tried another usb cable (from a previous Samsung device) and now my phone gets 1,900mah (closed to the charger output of 2,000 mah).
Every since I changed the usb cable, my charging is fast now. Hope this helps.

I would try a new cable and Charger that is rated 2.1 amps or better if will be charged real quick

elchingon said:
I would try a new cable and Charger that is rated 2.1 amps or better if will be charged real quick
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I noticed that using the Pure Nexus rom my charging time became significantly faster. In fact I can get a full charge from nearly dead in just over an hour. This is using the charger and cable that came with the phone.

I had the same problem too ! Did a full battery reset and everything is going good now !
MT tenso

How do you make full battery reset?

The charging rate is based on the output rating of the charger, which is determined by the resistance value between the Data+ and Data- USB pins. If you use a cheap cable with high(er) internal cabling resistance, that will throw off the detected charger output capacity rating, and knock you down to a lower charging current and longer charging time.
Also, one time, even with the original charger and original cable, I couldn't charge at anything more than the default USB 500mA. I ended up having to power off the phone, and power it on again, which fixed the charging current and speed problem.

Install this app & check if it is getting charged at max current; anything less than 1200 mA when screen on & 1900 mA when screen off, you need to change your cable or charger
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.abmantis.galaxychargingcurrent.free
Sent from my GT-I9500 using Tapatalk

I read somewhere that if you activate airplane mode the battery is charging faster.

[Q] Charging w/ alternate chargers... a risk?

I bought a brand-new Nexus 5 a few weeks ago. However it came with a 0.85A wall charger which is LG branded... and some 'generic' cable that was included too. Used it twice, but it took around 8-10 hours just to charge 80% of it. I plugged my old Galaxy Ace USB cable to the LG charger and it reduced to two and a half hours, same with my alternate charger from the aforementioned phone (5.0V + 0.7A).
But this led me to a question: Is using alternate chargers with < 1.2A of output a risky way to charge my Nexus 5 battery? I saw somewhere that it might even damage the circuit board (a rare case) and I'm a bit worried about it.

Using a charger with a lower amperage output will take longer for the phone to charge. Also, using a cheaper cable will also lengthen the charge time as the cable can pass the full amount of power to the phone. This has been my experience with using oem cables vs dolls store cables me chargers.

audit13 said:
Using a charger with a lower amperage output will take longer for the phone to charge. Also, using a cheaper cable will also lengthen the charge time as the cable can pass the full amount of power to the phone. This has been my experience with using oem cables vs dolls store cables me chargers.
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But... Will a Samsung wall charger with 0.7A of output damage my phone if I use it as my main charger? Because I also have a chinaphone which came with a bad charger and the Samsung one works fine.

No, the Samsung charger @ 0.7A will not damage the phone. I use a 1.0 A and 2.0 A Samsung charger with my N5 and it has been fine for months and months.

With the Samsung 0.7A charger, battery gets charged in 2:10 hours. I still don't understand it since I came from a low-end Samsung device which could complete its charge in about three hours (and that one had a 1500mAh battery...)

This is a tricky question, no doubt about it.
IMO, the cable quality is way more important than the current output (0.7 A, 0.85 A, etc).
I have a Samsung S4 charger with its cable (it seems very well built and it's thicker than other cables) and my N5 goes from 10% to fully charged in less than 3 hours.
Funny facts - happened to me:
- I had a very cheap cable (probably from China) that came with a battery bank. Surprisingly, it was the fastest way to charge my phone - reached almost 2.0 A. Later I found the trick: this cable doesn't have all the four wires, it only had two (positive and negative, without the data wires). I believe the data wires is used to perform some kind of amperage control; without it, no control was done and led to a very fast (probably dangerous) charging. I don't use this cable anymore, chances are that this nasty cable screwed up my notebook battery
- My N5 is almost two years old. Recently I had a problem with the Power button, the internal contact of the switch on the board was stuck 'pressed' and this led my phone to an endlessly force-reboot. I discovered this behavior after some google search and one of the possible causes of it is exactly the usage of a non-default / faster charger, it said that this could melt something - SOURCE
It makes sense, but I can't confirm this. I was able to fix this by smashing the phone on a table a few times (lol) and I'm still using a non-default charger
Can anyone confirm / say something about these facts?
For those who wants to see the diference between cables and chargers, give this app a try:
Play Store - Ampere
This app is a current meter, I use it on a regular basis and it is pretty reliable - the dev it's a XDA member and this app can be discussed here
Hope this helps!

You can not harm a phone with a 5 volt charger. The phone takes the amps it needs. More is better than less. I use 2 amp, 5 volt ones. As has been said the usb cable is the key thing. The better quality the better charge.