Develop Bugs

[Q] Real 2A car charger. Which one??

Yesterday I've been navigating again with Navigon on my SGS2, but unfortunately it slowly drains my battery. When using google maps it dous charge the phone. So apperently Navigon is using a lot more 'juice' compared to Google map navigation.
Do you people know a charger (I assume one of 2A, while my own charger is an 1A charger) which does charge the phone with bluetooth, gps and Navigon running?

I bough a 2.1A car charger from belkin and I still have battery drain.
Even with the phone detecting it correctly as AC CHARGEr.

Hmmm that's to bad
Ordered a 2A charger from ebay myself.... But I doubt it will work, especially after reading your message.
I think the phone only takes a maximum of Amps for charging, even though it uses more. Resulting in a slow battery drain.

Note that it will stopped charging if the battery gets too hot to avoid damage or possibly exploding the battery.
Obviously having a higher rated charger will heat the battery more, so make sure the phone has its back ventilated, and try avoiding direct sunlight.
Read of several people that had this issue, but got their phones charging when avoiding overheating it.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium App

Try the Rockfish premium charger. It's 2A and looks nice.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium App

has anyone had any luck with the motorola charger? I bought one for my nexus one + car dock and it always worked fine... have yet to have a chance to use it for my SGS2 though..

Mixy said:
Note that it will stopped charging if the battery gets too hot to avoid damage or possibly exploding the battery.
Obviously having a higher rated charger will heat the battery more, so make sure the phone has its back ventilated, and try avoiding direct sunlight.
Read of several people that had this issue, but got their phones charging when avoiding overheating it.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But that's a bit strange, because a charger should deliver what a phone is asking for. As far as I know, a charger doesn't push the charge to the phone. But we will see, if the phone does get overheated, then that will be the end of the charger.
malimal said:
Try the Rockfish premium charger. It's 2A and looks nice.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium App
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Click to collapse
Do you have a link where it can be found?
mynameisjon said:
has anyone had any luck with the motorola charger? I bought one for my nexus one + car dock and it always worked fine... have yet to have a chance to use it for my SGS2 though..
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Which motorola charger?

Bart1981 said:
But that's a bit strange, because a charger should deliver what a phone is asking for. As far as I know, a charger doesn't push the charge to the phone. But we will see, if the phone does get overheated, then that will be the end of the charger.
Do you have a link where it can be found?
Which motorola charger?
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Click to collapse
You're mistaken.
The thing that you plug into your car, that's called a power supply.
The real charger is built into the phone. That's the charging circuit that will shut down the charger, stop drawing power from the power supply when the phone gets too hot.
I doubt the phone will be able to take 2A, and the circuits will prevent the phone from drawing 2A of current.
#1. So, what you're looking for is actually a power supply that provides suficient current. Most car chargers will be about the same.
The power supply is connected to your phone via cables. Badly made cables will not be able to supply more than 200mah, and as a result you're going to take a really long time to charge your phone, and with a high drain application going on, you're not going to be able to charge your phone.
I had that exact same problem previously, and it was because of a lousy batch of oem cable I bought from ebay. Original, and other brands of oem cables worked fine.
#2. You need to buy some proper cables. I buy from www.monoprice.com, because I like my cables to be gold plated.
Edit: No, I'm not related to monoprice. I just love my gold cables plated heads. Can't find them cheaper anywhere else.

But the quality of the cable is not the only thing. The phone should also see the charger as an AC charger instead of an usb charger. This can be done by connecting the middle pins in the usb cable. Otherwise it will only charge with 500mA.

Bart1981 said:
Do you have a link where it can be found?
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Click to collapse
i got mine off ebay, but its like this one below
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Rocketfish%26%23153%3B+-+Premium+Micro+USB+Vehicle+Charger/1114106.p?id=1218221913668&skuId=1114106&st=Rocketfish%20Car%20Charger%20&cp=2&lp=1
make sure you get model RF-PMC55

Bart1981 said:
But the quality of the cable is not the only thing. The phone should also see the charger as an AC charger instead of an usb charger. This can be done by connecting the middle pins in the usb cable. Otherwise it will only charge with 500mA.
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Click to collapse
Is there a car charger you can buy that does this automatically? (i.e phone thinks it's plugged into AC rather than USB). I'd rather not plug anything i've been messing about with into my beloved SII.

It's not about the charger but about the cable you're using.

Highest Charging Current for One X

Hi all:
I just did a test on the maximum charging current of the One X using current measurement equipment, and it shows that the One X does not draw above 460mA of current while charging.
With this value, i suspect that the One X limits max charging current at 500mA, which means 3 things:
1) Using any previous generation USB charger (750mA or 850mA or 1A) is good enough. Attempting to use the iPad's charger (rated at 2A) WILL NOT get you faster charging time.
2) When using battery draining applications, the charging current may not be enough for you to both CHARGE and USE the Phone. Thus it might be a better idea to give your One X some dedicated charging time.
3) Some computer USB ports may specify 500mA of output current, but there are many times the available current is less than that. On my USB port, the charging current is only about 300mA at times. So it is better to use a dedicated charger if you have it available. Having that said, however, it is still ok to charge the One X with a USB port at 300mA, just that charging will take longer.
That's all I have to report. Useful information for all.

limestone said:
Useful information for all.
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Click to collapse
Useful indeed. Thanks
Sent from my HTC Vivid using XDA app

I've had mine charge at 780mAh+ before. 1amp HTC charger. Charge rate slows down at the last 20-30% or so. So from 70%-100% battery, charge rates normally slow to about 450mAh.

limestone said:
Hi all:
1) Using any previous generation USB charger (750mA or 850mA or 1A) is good enough. Attempting to use the iPad's charger (rated at 2A) WILL NOT get you faster charging time.
Useful information for all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks a lot, i can confirm the statement above because my stock charger is broken and i'm using the ipad's one.
bye

i tried to use the charger for htc chacha and hd2..
both does not work.. red light will light up but after a while it will go off and the phone does not charge..

Charging my HOX while the phones working hard eventually (after say, 5 mins), causes the charge LED to flash green/red. I've had this twice now, once while playing a 720P HD film, and once when playing Glowball.
Both times the phone was very hot, so i'm not sure if the LED thing was to indicate that the battery was too hot to charge, or that the charger could not supply enough power to charge and power the phone at the same time.

fi3ry_icy said:
i tried to use the charger for htc chacha and hd2..
both does not work.. red light will light up but after a while it will go off and the phone does not charge..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm using my HD2 charger at work every day. It charges at about 400/500mA.
Original charger gives me 650/750mA (lowers at the end)

chaps said:
Charging my HOX while the phones working hard eventually (after say, 5 mins), causes the charge LED to flash green/red. I've had this twice now, once while playing a 720P HD film, and once when playing Glowball.
Both times the phone was very hot, so i'm not sure if the LED thing was to indicate that the battery was too hot to charge, or that the charger could not supply enough power to charge and power the phone at the same time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If the charger cannot cope with the discharge from the game, a pop up message actually appears. If it's blinking means it's too hot. Try not to do anything intensive the last 20-30% remaining (meaning at 70-100% battery).

Nice info thanks
Sent from my HTC One X using XDA

fi3ry_icy said:
i tried to use the charger for htc chacha and hd2..
both does not work.. red light will light up but after a while it will go off and the phone does not charge..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here... I am using the Atrix 4G (US) charger, it does not charge the phone. The charger gives output of 850mA. It does charge when plugged into the laptop, but I think it will take very long that way.
*edit for posterity*
after a while (I did it when battery had charged to 20%), I could connect the Moto US charger, and it would show as "AC". It would not want to charge through it when the battery was really low (2%), but it would charge via USB in that case. Weird behavior, IMO.

USB limited to 500. AC limited to 1A.
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium

If you want maximum speed of charging (AC charging) you need:
1A charger with shorted D+ and D- pins (eg, original HTC charger).
iPad charger probably doesn't have these pins shorted, so in this case phone will see it as USB charging (you can check it in settings->battery) and will limit charging current to 500mA. Also lot of aftermarket car chargers will work only in USB mode despite they are able to supply 1A.
Here you can find some info on USB Charging Ports (shorted D+- pins):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#Charging_ports_and_accessory_charging_adapters

When charger is "USB", it will not draw more than 500mA from the charger, and usually it will not charge at all (because the current draw with screen on is higher than 500mA).
When charger is AC, it seems to draw 1000mA - but this is still too low to charge while phone is doing anything, as it will draw 700mA and charge ~250mA top.
I hope this can be tuned in kernel, because it sucks, I also hope that power source can be AC (and not battery - look in dmesg when charger is connected), because battery gets too hot when under load...

colin_ktp said:
If you want maximum speed of charging (AC charging) you need:
1A charger with shorted D+ and D- pins (eg, original HTC charger).
iPad charger probably doesn't have these pins shorted, so in this case phone will see it as USB charging (you can check it in settings->battery) and will limit charging current to 500mA. Also lot of aftermarket car chargers will work only in USB mode despite they are able to supply 1A.
Here you can find some info on USB Charging Ports (shorted D+- pins):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#Charging_ports_and_accessory_charging_adapters
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you post a potential list of car charger which are working at 1mA according to you?

I've only tested few devices:
Extrememac external battery for iPhone/iPad (max 2A) had pins not shorted - USB charging mode on One X (500mA).
Some cheap car adapters - max 1A (according to spec) - USB charging mode on One X.
To fox this problem you should prepare a USB extension cable or micro-usb cable with shorted D+ and D- pins and it should be recognized as AC adapter. I think that also some old HTC phone chargers might come with shorted pins in cable already, but don't know which...

What about the official HTC car charger?

MickyMax said:
What about the official HTC car charger?
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Click to collapse
Yes, that one will charge at the full rate.
There is no list of known good chargers - it's down to luck or a recommendation from someone who found one. You can be sure that any charger advertised as "iPhone, iPad or iPod" compatible will NOT charge your One X at the full rate.
I found one recently in a local petrol station shop. It was £5. I took it apart to have a look and the D+ and D- pins are correctly connected together (via a low value resistor) so it charges at the full rate.
So, I might suggest you look for the cheapest Chinese car charger you can.

USB charging not OK inside a car
zvieratko said:
When charger is "USB", it will not draw more than 500mA from the charger, and usually it will not charge at all (because the current draw with screen on is higher than 500mA).
When charger is AC, it seems to draw 1000mA - but this is still too low to charge while phone is doing anything, as it will draw 700mA and charge ~250mA top.
I hope this can be tuned in kernel, because it sucks, I also hope that power source can be AC (and not battery - look in dmesg when charger is connected), because battery gets too hot when under load...
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Click to collapse
Bingo. I also noticed that when I have the screen on at 100% brightness, GPS and Bluetooth on, i.e. in the car, the USB charger cannot even keep up with the battery drain.
On top of that, the battery gets really hot.
I did not have any of these issues with my SGS2, and frankly, I think it's very disappointing. One should at least be able to stay on the same battery level while doing nothing too fancy and on USB inside a car.

A380 said:
Bingo. I also noticed that when I have the screen on at 100% brightness, GPS and Bluetooth on, i.e. in the car, the USB charger cannot even keep up with the battery drain.
On top of that, the battery gets really hot.
I did not have any of these issues with my SGS2, and frankly, I think it's very disappointing. One should at least be able to stay on the same battery level while doing nothing too fancy and on USB inside a car.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are a lot of factors in the charging current. When you charge, the battery will heat up during the process, especially towards the end of the charging cycle. If you are using your phone at the same time and cause even more heat and charging may slow down to prevent overheating. Also, as mentioned prior, charging slows down as capacity is reached. 100% brightness, GPS, and Bluetooth all on has always walked the fine line of just barely keeping up on my past phones on a 500 mA USB charger. On top of that, this phone is a lot more powerful than an SGS2 and the T3 and big screen produce more heat which may be slowing your charging more.
The problem is a lot of cheap chargers that the phone thinks are USB chargers, not AC chargers, thus causing them to only charge at 500 mA. If you have a proper charger, or a properly modified charger, you should get more like 1A, assuming conditions are right.
In the past I've used Battery Monitor Widget from the Play store to show my charging current on a widget, as well as track and graph battery use, charging current, temperature, etc. Might want to give it a try if you're more interested in charging details.

Im using my htc desire charger and cable (the one that splits in two). It works fine for me but it does take a while to get a full charge. Should i use the charger and cable that came with the phone?

[Q] Does USB charging harm the battery ?

I mean compare to wall AC charger, that is.
question.................................

no
charging a battery is always very "difficult" for the battery. if you charge not so fast, the battery wont get hot anymore and it's better for battery life. but it takes 2h 30 minutes and with a/c you need 1h

nope..not at all..usb charging gives very less amount of energy compared to AC charging..thats why it takes more time to charge and it is completely safe

arpith.fbi said:
nope..not at all..usb charging gives very less amount of energy compared to AC charging..thats why it takes more time to charge and it is completely safe
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True. I prefer charging my phone by USB. This way my phone never gets hot. If your don't have time then use AC charging.
Sent from my HTC One V using XDA

but whatever happens just avoid car charging!! its can do more damage than we can imagine

arpith.fbi said:
but whatever happens just avoid car charging!! its can do more damage than we can imagine
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And why is that?
Swyped from my SE Xperia arc (LT15i) using Tapatalk 2

xtacy! said:
And why is that?
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Becoz car battery does not give stable electricity and output with variance electricity that may damage your battery.

arpith.fbi said:
Becoz car battery does not give stable electricity and output with variance electricity that may damage your battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's the chargers job.
Sent from my LT18i using Tapatalk 2

I've got no idea if its safe for the battery, I prefer AC, I never charge my arc over the computer. What about the difference between USB and AC is that AC gives you 850mA an the computer USB(2.0) only 500mA!

Car chargers are safe as long as they are decently made (Fully Regulated). A good regulated Car charger is just as safe as any other charger.
Lithium Batteries are pretty hardy as far as charging goes. (just dont over charge or fully discharge)
as far as USB is concerned, some USB2 ports will supply up to 900ma,
I charge my phone on my Tablet charger all the time (2000ma or 2Amp) simply because it is FAST. sure the phone gets warm but the phone/charger will regulate the charge as it needs to.
it is also good to note that the quality of the charger is very important.
cheep charger = more likely to damage battery as well as cause funny issues with the phone when plugged in.
Pvy.

Exactly. Your battery will prevent it from getting over charged. It's safe.
Personally, I use Nokia chargers as they deliver a higher output.
Nokia AC-10N gives an output of 1,200mA. [Home - AC wall charger with a long cable]
Nokia DC-20 gives an output of 1,000mA. [Car charger with dual USB ports; both ports output 1A each].
Been using both for a long time now without any issues. Didn't go for the SE chargers because of the lower output, which takes longer to charge the phone.
And to the OP, USB charging is safe.
Swyped from my SE Xperia arc (LT15i) using Tapatalk 2

hox & fast chargers

Is it safe to use a 2.1a 5v usb charger with the hox?
Will it speed the charging? (Stock charger takes 4 hours to charge!!)

Doorman404 said:
Is it safe to use a 2.1a 5v usb charger with the hox?
Will it speed the charging? (Stock charger takes 4 hours to charge!!)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's safe, but it won't speed it up.

so 4 hours charge is normal? (With the stock charger)

I dunno, never timed it, but charging a LiPoly battery faster than that can shorten its life, and since its not removable, that would be a pain.

Doorman404 said:
Is it safe to use a 2.1a 5v usb charger with the hox?
Will it speed the charging? (Stock charger takes 4 hours to charge!!)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As Ben
said should be safe but won't speed up
Doorman404 said:
so 4 hours charge is normal? (With the stock charger)
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Click to collapse
kinda think there is a bit threads about that too. Yeah takes too long....
BenPope said:
I dunno, never timed it, but charging a LiPoly battery faster than that can shorten its life, and since its not removable, that would be a pain.
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One additional thing. Learned that the hard way.
Bought a HTC car charger. HTC supplied cable to that HTC car charger. Original HTC car charger on this charger sucked... despite showing AC charging
So look first when you charge if it says USB charging or AC. And then check how long it does to charger. Change the cable to the original one supplied with the phone if it's more as on that original stock charger
Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

Well charging doesn't have 100% efficiency so a 1a charger won't charge at 1a, so a higher charger means you should get to the 1a limit but it's not going to reduce charging times enough to notice.
Sent from my HTC One X using xda app-developers app

treebill said:
Well charging doesn't have 100% efficiency so a 1a charger won't charge at 1a, so a higher charger means you should get to the 1a limit but it's not going to reduce charging times enough to notice.
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Click to collapse
A charger rated at output of 1A should be capable of outputting at 1A. Of course, it will draw a little more power from the input than it provides to the output.
When charging, during the first phase (constant current) the maximum current draw is typically around 1A, for up to about an hour, then it drops off quite quickly when it moves to the second phase of constant voltage.

Doesn't charge enough to maintain screen?

Hi
Used my Note II for the first time on a long journey using google navigation, and even though it was plugged in throughout the battery was draining. According to current widget it was getting1698mA from my car socket whicj is the same as I get with the mains charger (sounds suspiciously identical in fact so I wonder whether its accurate..)
I'm using one of those 3 amp 2 socket chargers plugged into the 2 amp socket.
Surely it should be possible to charge and use at the same time? I can't believe it should be using over 1.6 amps to maintain the screen?
Sent from my GT-N7100 using xda app-developers app

Pics attached
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gingerprince said:
Pics attached
Sent from my GT-N7100 using xda app-developers app
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Maybe you are not getting a constant uninterrupted charge. I had a similar problem with a TomTom SatNav, it was constantly letting me know the charger had just been reconnected. The quality and length of the cable is an important factor too. I discovered using a 3 metre cable at home caused my charger to struggle to keep up with the phone's demand. Changing the cable solved the problem immediately.

Not had any charger disconnected messages, and charging icon seems solid. Will try another cable though.
Ta
Sent from my GT-N7100 using xda app-developers app

gingerprince said:
Pics attached
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Make sure to check the Battery option of the settings screen while the charger is plugged in. You'll see either (AC) or (USB) next to "Charging", and that will tell you whether the USB car charger has the data pins shorted.
(USB) means the car charger doesn't have the data pins shorted, and the phone will not try to draw any more than 0.5A from the device. With CPU usage, and the screen on, this will definitely drain your battery. I remember it doing this with my Galaxy Nexus before, and the Note is no different - it needs even more power!
(AC) means the data pins are shorted (The middle two pins in a 4-pin USB connector), which means the device conforms to the USB charging spec. Lots of chargers that are designed for Apple devices don't have them shorted, because Apple doesn't use this to determine what charging speed it can charge at.
I'm in the process of looking for a good wall charger and a car charger that does a consistent 1.8A (The technical max for the Note II), as I have gone through several wall and car chargers that do not have data pins shorted.
Basically, the charging device needs three things:
1) Circuitry capable of delivering enough power: If the electric supply is only capable of providing a shaky 0.4A, then you might not want to use the charger
2) Shorted data pins: If the phone sees the data pins are shorted, it will try to draw more than 500mA, or 0.5A. The phone has to know that it's safe to try, though.
3) Good circuitry: If the first two are true, but the power is unreliable, the Android phone will only take as much power as the power supply can reliably give, minus 100mA. This means if a power charger is "capable" of 1A, AND has the data pins shorted, but it can only provide 400mA cleanly, then your phone will only ever draw 300mA from it.
There's an under-used program on the play store called "Galaxy Charging Current" - and it shows the three variables on the phone, "charging_now", "charging_max", and "charging_avg" - watching these when you have a charger plugged in can help you figure out what type of charger you have.