iPhone 3GS Car Charger

anti5580 · 18 Sep 2009 at 15:08

Not sure if anyone can help ...

I need to go do a few long distant journeys from Sunday onwards and I need to find a car charger that will work with my 3GS. Does anyone know where I can find a cheap one in the shops? If I knew earlier I would have brought it online but a bit late for that now

Thanks!

Margaret · 18 Sep 2009 at 15:16

I think any will work fine, iPods/iPhones have used the same connector for ages now. I was using the car charger I bought for my 1st Gen iPod Nano the other day and that worked fine.

Randell Floyd · 18 Sep 2009 at 16:14

Yep the ones Tesco and such sell work fine.

Combat Fighter · 18 Sep 2009 at 18:54

Think I got a charger of the bay for about £5

anti5580 · 18 Sep 2009 at 19:53

Randell Floyd said:
Yep the ones Tesco and such sell work fine.

Margaret said:
I think any will work fine, iPods/iPhones have used the same connector for ages now. I was using the car charger I bought for my 1st Gen iPod Nano the other day and that worked fine.

OK cool, just needed to double check because I remember reading somewhere that majority of the accessories prior to the 3GS don't work even though they have the same connection. Even looking on the official site shows that most of the car chargers are not compatible with the 3GS.

Combat Fighter said:
Think I got a charger of the bay for about £5

I would have got one off the bay but was only told that I had to be somewhere today so I didn't enough time to buy one online.

Margaret · 18 Sep 2009 at 20:36

I don't see why they wouldn't all work as they all use the same connector, just as long as some power is getting through it should be just fine.

Were they car accessories that linked the phone to the cars stereo or anything like that? I can understand why they wouldn't work.

anti5580 · 18 Sep 2009 at 23:57

Margaret said:
I don't see why they wouldn't all work as they all use the same connector, just as long as some power is getting through it should be just fine.

Were they car accessories that linked the phone to the cars stereo or anything like that? I can understand why they wouldn't work.

That's what I thought but apparently it's a common that some of the accessories don't work on the 3GS ... it might have something to do with OS 3.0+

Feek · 19 Sep 2009 at 09:00

There are two reasons why a dock/connector may not officially be supported by the iPhone 3GS.

The original dock connector charged the device using the pins connected to a firewire port. I don't know if the original could be used via USB or not but either way, the firewire connections were the primary source of power and most accessory manufacturers used the firewire pins to charge.

The original iPhone could be charged using firewire but when the 3G was introduced it removed the firewire connection. You can still get audio out of the dock connector but you have to use USB to charge it.

It's the same with the 3GS, most older accessories won't charge it.

As for compatibility, I believe that there has to be some sort of filtering in the line to get rid of all the phone interference for them to be officially supported. I have a charger/transmitter thing in the car which works with the 3G and the 3GS but I get occasional phone sounds through the transmitted audio and I get the warning when I connect my phone saying it's not supported.

If it says it's compatible with the iPhone 3G though, it will be compatible with the 3GS. That just means that the manufacturer hasn't updated their packaging.

jas72 · 22 Sep 2009 at 13:18

is the touch the same feek?