Chargers - understanding the figures

Belly · 25 Jul 2017 at 12:10

Currently I have three chargers, I've shown the figures next to each.

1. Samsung. 5.3v = 2.0A

2. Anker (4 ports). 5v = 5.4A (2.4A max per port)

3. LG G5 Fast Charge. 9.00v = 1.8A or 5.00v = 1.8A

When I go on holiday I take the Anker charger and use it for charging Samsung Tablet and Phone with no noticeable problems.

Very recently I bought a LG G5 mobile phone. The fast charger states only to be used with this phone. Fair enough I'll NOT plug any other devices into this "charger".

However would I be able to plug the LG G5 into the Anker charger? Would I be right in thinking that the phone would (just) take longer to charge but the phone would NOT be damaged?

Just out of interest what would be the implications of attaching the Samsung Tablet/Phone into the LG G5 fast charger?

Not knowing anything about electricity..... When I look at the figures above it would suggest that the Anker should charge faster with an output of 2.4 compared to Samsung 2.0 and LG G5 1.8 amps.

Thanx

POB · 25 Jul 2017 at 12:16

They will all work fine with any of them.

If they don't support fast charging they should charge quicker on the Anker.

Devices only draw what they want.

MassiveJim · 25 Jul 2017 at 13:27

My missus has recently had a Lenovo phone which came with its own special charger that can charge the 5000Mah battery in 2 hours.
If I use that on my HTC, it normally gets to around 90% then complains the charger isn't compatible and asks me to unplug it, I suspect your LG charger will do the same.

As to your question, yes you can charge your phone off any of those chargers and it will just take longer.

grudas · 25 Jul 2017 at 14:10

You can use any charger on the any phone/device. The battery has protection to not go above the max rate anyway.

Sasahara · 25 Jul 2017 at 23:21

9v could potentially damage a phone not designed to take that voltage. Which is why they have the warning.

You can use any of the 5v chargers with any 5v device (most on the market) with the correct cables.

As had been mentioned the device will only draw the maximum power it's deigned to charge at, but if used with changer that is lower than the maximum it will just charge at that lower rate.

This is what you'd get on a standard USB port on a PC as USB 2 spec has a rating of 0.5 A and USB 2 0.9 A.
Some motherboards have specific charging ports that go over the USB standards.

You can work out the current to compare. The LG on the 9 V @ 1.8 A is 16.2 W, on 5 V it's 9 W. (assuming it's charging at full 1.8A capacity)

Your Anker is the best universal charger at 2.4 A max, meaning given a device that can charge at 2.4 A it can output 12 W.

Rroff · 25 Jul 2017 at 23:27

Fast chargers with 9v output "should" only output 5v unless a higher voltage is "negotiated" but the detection is usually a fairly simplistic combination of resistors between various power and/or differential lines which could be accidentally configured by some devices if there is any conflict in the detection values and 9v will very much fry* the charging circuits on a lot of devices which are often specced to around 5.5v max unless they have a wide input regulator or similar which many won't use due to the voltage drop.

* One of the common chips used for instance is the TP4056 which has an absolute max of 8v, another popular one that is used in phones is the MAX77829 with a maximum voltage of 6.3v.

jpaul · 25 Jul 2017 at 23:49

(had also researched this) Does the Anker have the Power IQ

Some of them have “smart ports” on them (Anker calls it “Power IQ”), which means the charger can auto-detect if an Apple, Android, Samsung Tablet, Kindle, etc device is plugged into that port and change the voltage on the data lines accordingly to signal to the device that it can draw the maximum possible current.

otherwise may only provide 750mA and be much slower

some related anandtech comments, showing nuances

"When used with the bundled charger, the Galaxy S 4 recharges much faster than HTC's One, despite using a larger battery. Obviously the Galaxy S 4 will charge with any USB charger, but the charge time will simply be longer. Samsung uses a voltage divider and signals the presence of their own charger by sending 1.2-1.3 V across the D+ / D- pins, this is similar to what Apple does with 2.0 or 2.8 V across the pins for various USB chargers they've shipped over the years.This signaling is essentially Samsung's proprietary tablet charging signaling which they've employed on the Galaxy Note 2 and now SGS4, in fact the two use the same exact charger, so it's worth tossing out your old ones and getting the appropriate one to take advantage of the faster charging."

413x · 26 Jul 2017 at 00:48

I tend to avoid plugging in non fast charge devices into fast chargers.

Just in case the device could take the 9 or 12v input.

Im sure there are safe guards in place, but I don't want to chance it.

Other than that as long as the charger provides enough amps for the device draw it doesn't matter as everything is 5V (unless fast charge)

Rroff · 26 Jul 2017 at 00:52

413x said:
Im sure there are safe guards in place, but I don't want to chance it.

Largely its done pretty crudely with resistor dividers for identification - while the chances of it failing are low its not impossible.

413x · 26 Jul 2017 at 00:53

Rroff said:
Largely its done pretty crudely with resistor dividers for identification - while the chances of it failing are low its not impossible.

Yeah that's what I thought. It's rare enough that if I need to charge something I will, but if I have other ports I'll use a standard.

Rroff · 26 Jul 2017 at 01:03

Looks like a properly supported QC2 signal is a bit harder to accidentally trigger:

According the description in the CHY100 datasheet, the processes to enter QC2.0 are:
−Apply a voltage between 0.325V and 2V to D+ for at least 1.25 seconds
−Discharge the D- voltage below 0.325V for at least 1ms while keep the D+ voltage above 0.325V
−Apply the voltage levels in Table 3 to set the output voltage. (must keep the D+ voltage above 0.325V)

Diddums · 26 Jul 2017 at 07:32

Belly said:
Currently I have three chargers

Is one of them a Hellcat though? That's what the cool kids hang out with.

Belly said:
Thanx

Don't do this. The correct spelling is only one letter away. C'mon champ, you're better than that.

Belly · 28 Jul 2017 at 09:13

[QUOTE="Diddums. Don't do this. The correct spelling is only one letter away. C'mon champ, you're better than that.[/QUOTE]

Thankkks Diddums, you're quite right. Force of habit I'm afraid.

Thanx everyone else. I was born in a house where we didn't have electricity until I was almost 10 years old. At school a teacher was trying to explain electricity along the lines of water coming out of a hose pipe. The lesson was wasted on me, from what I could understand electricity came out of the walls NOT through a hose pipe.

I'll reserve the fast charger for the LG G5.