I think anker power IQ technology is pure BS here is why...

A

AC Question

it's not anker power IQ it's just any devices "power IQ" it draw as much as it designed. If device was designed to charge max at 1.5A it will take from anker power iQ or any power bank with 2.1A output 1.5A it's just lame how many millions people have bought this BS.... BTW in their home page they compare it to USB laptop port lol, you better compare it to other power banks 2.1A output and I'm 100% sure that results will be same then and then you don't have a "trick" to market...
Why they don't compare it with other competitor power banks which provide 2.1A output
it's been discussed gazillion times in forums and everywhere that device decide how much power it will take and NOT the charger. Of course if charger can give max 1A and device want up to say 2A then yes it will charge with only 1A but any charger with 2.1A output will charge "intelligently" any smartphone....
here is article I read and quote:
"Can I blow up my USB device?

iPad USB chargerThere is a huge variance, then, between normal USB ports rated at 500mA and dedicated charging ports which range all the way up to 3,000mA. This leads to a rather important question: If you take a smartphone which came with a 900mA wall charger, and plug it into a 2,100mA iPad charger, as an example, will it blow up?

In short, no: You can plug any USB device into any USB cable and into any USB port, and nothing will blow up — and in fact, using a more powerful charger should speed up battery charging."
 

Rukbat

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1. A phone won't draw more than it's designed to draw. I usually wire-charge my phones from a 30 Amp bench supply I happen to have on my desk. My Note 3 still only draws about 1000mA if the data pins aren't shorted and 1200mA if they are. That's how it's designed to work. (The charger can't modify Ohm's Law.)

2. Anker doesn't give enough data on the site, but you can email them and find out - but I suspect that what they mean is that if your phone is designed to use 9 Volt Quick Charging, you don't have to move a switch to the 9 Volt position, their charger detects that and does it for you. The same with 12 Volt Quick Charging.

But you can't charge, say, a Note 3 at more than 1200mA, unless you charge the battery out of the phone (I've done quick 1C [about 3 Amp]) charges with no problem - with a charger designed for that). The phone itself limits the charge current. (The charger isn't connected directly to the battery, there's circuitry inside the phone between the charging port and the battery.)

using a more powerful charger should speed up battery charging.
As long as the less powerful charger wasn't putting out as much current as the phone can draw. My 2 Amp Samsung charger and my 30 Amp bench supply both charge the Note 3 at 1200mA. I could use a 5,000 Amp supply and it wouldn't change. But if the first charger could only put out 500mA, using a larger charger would increase the charging current - but only up to 1200mA. Anything over that won't make any difference in charging time.
 

r-p

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I know this is an old thread, but searching the net I cannot find a decent answer as the world seems to revolve around Apple and no information can be found on my Samsung S4...

Will Volt IQ increase the voltage on an S4 like the original charger does? An S4 can charge at close to 2A but will only do so if the voltage rises. The OEM charger will output (guesstimates based on measuring and my failing memory): 5V at 500mA, 5.3V at 1A and 5.5V at 2A

What charger out there does this too? I am modifying all carchargers to output 5.4V instead of 5.0V but I want a single decent home charger with at least 6 outputs that will charge everything in the house including my S4 and a Samsung tablet with 2A, but there is surprising little info to help me pick...

I am assuming the above poster also charges at higher than 5V on his bench power supply as my phone doesn't draw 1200mA at 5.0V. My testing of an iPad shows they (Apple) draw the same current regardless of voltage (google " ricpaul ipadforums ", last post)
 

zenmervolt

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it's been discussed gazillion times in forums and everywhere that device decide how much power it will take and NOT the charger.

Sort of.

The device will ultimately decide how much power to draw, but many devices use unique signaling on the D+ and D- lines to identify their name-brand chargers. At the most basic level, a device should limit itself to 500 mA when connected to a (dedicated) data port if it is to remain compliant with USB spec. A dedicated charging port, where the D+ and D- lines are shorted, is detected by the device sending a signal on the D- line and listening for that same signal to come back over the D+ line. For certainty, the device will usually repeat the process in reverse, sending on the D+ and listening on the D-. If it gets its own signal back each time, it knows it's on a dedicated charging port.

Once it knows it's on a dedicated port, it can just demand as much current as it wants, right? Well, technically yes, but in practice no. First of all, the spec for BC 1.2 only goes up to 1.5 amps. And it's not at all uncommon to find cheap USB chargers sold at gas stations that max out at 1 amp (or even 750 mA). And not all of these cheap chargers have safeguards to stop a device from drawing more current through them than designed (you really don't want a device pulling 1.5 amps through a cheap gas station charger designed for 750 mA; that's how fires get started). So most device manufacturers are rather conservative with what they will let the device pull from a "basic" charger that merely has the D+ and D- lines shorted together.

So what does a device manufacturer do if they want to be able to charge at more than 1.5 amps? They build a non-standard charger. See HERE for examples of Apple's and Sony's non-standard port wiring that signals the maximum safe current draw for their devices. The same link also describes the wiring for a simple charger adapter emulator that can switch between the standard DCP protocol described in the USB BC 1.2 specification and Apple's proprietary signaling protocol.

Anker's "Power iQ" is almost certainly a slightly more complex variety of the adapter emulator described in that link. They probably use some form of microcontroller that can recognize several of the more common devices/manufacturers and mimic the appropriate nonstandard D+/D- signaling to tell the device it's safe to draw up to the maximum design current of the charger thereby preventing the device from falling back to a slow-but-virtually-guaranteed-safe-even-with-cheap-gas-station-chargers fail-safe charging mode.

Of course if charger can give max 1A and device want up to say 2A then yes it will charge with only 1A

Also sort of. See above. While a good charger will have some sort of fail-safe to prevent excessive draw (at minimum some form of thermal shut-down that would turn off the charger if it overheated), a $5 charger from an online auction website or from the local gas station may very well not. With a cheap charger that has no protection circuitry, if the phone asks for 2.4 amps, the charger will try to deliver 2.4 amps, even if the charger's electronics can only handle 750 mA. Granted, a 3x current overdraw like this would be rare (as even most cheap chargers today can deliver 1 amp and relatively few devices will draw the maximum 2.4 amp from a non-Type-C plug), but if it happened it would represent a significant fire risk.

And that puts us back to manufacturers designing their devices to only draw maximum power if the device recognizes the manufacturer's proprietary signaling protocol.