Are all vehicle chargers equal?

[LocrianGroove]

Can someone with a background in electronics tell me if all vehicle chargers are equal, electrically? I would speculate that they all have a simple wiring between hot and ground to a pin and ground of the mini usb plug. I can't imagine there is a transformer, voltage regulator, or anything of that nature in a vehicle charger, but I don't know for sure.

 

[addictedtocars]

I woudl say they have something in there becasue the phone takes USB at 5volts and most of these car adapters can put out 1amp. I just ordered power adapter to dual usb that can deliver 1amp per usb port so I can have 2 phones powered.

 

[Farabomb]

Pretty sure there is a regulator in there somewhere. It's probably quite simple but I doubt it's straight power from the Cig lighter.

 

[NMherron]

I always thought they were pretty much the same. However my new MicroUSB charger charges much faster than my old one. Not only is it faster, but the charge seems to last longer. My old MicroUSB charger in my car seemed to give a false reading. It would get to 100%, but the battery would last through half the usage of when I charged on the AC adapter in my home.

Nothing scientific, but this is just what I observed. This leads me to conclude that there is something different.

 

[delco714]

I used the Samsung car dock and the charger yesterday while using gps navi and had 4g enabled. I plugged the phone in @ 78% battery, but when i got to my destination 40 mins later and took the phone out my battery was 56%! Holy hell!

 

[kb0uy]

The rate of charge has to be less than what the phone uses with the display on. If you turn the display off once in a while it should keep up.

 

[delco714]

The rate of charge has to be less than what the phone uses with the display on. If you turn the display off once in a while it should keep up.

I wanted to say "exactly"... But then i thought... The rate of charge wast even CLOSE lol! There's no way to charge effectively and use gps at night. However it helps if a minute after you get going, turn mobile data off.

 

[Rice923]

I wanted to say "exactly"... But then i thought... The rate of charge wast even CLOSE lol! There's no way to charge effectively and use gps at night. However it helps if a minute after you get going, turn mobile data off.

Can't you turn off the GPS on the phone and use cell tower triangulation? I've only heard of this and never done it myself, but thought I'd put it out there.

 

[Farabomb]

I don't think the triangulation would be accurate enough for the GPS to work well.

 

[rmanaka]

Can't you turn off the GPS on the phone and use cell tower triangulation? I've only heard of this and never done it myself, but thought I'd put it out there.

I've seen tower triangulation be miles off in some cases...I think the biggest drain on the battery is just having a constantly changing screen on all of the time! I have a stand-alone portable bluetooth GPS and it will run forever on a single charge.

I wonder if the GPS uses less power than the cellular radios use as they hop from tower to tower, not to mention the LTE radio...

 

[Crunch140]

Can someone with a background in electronics tell me if all vehicle chargers are equal, electrically? I would speculate that they all have a simple wiring between hot and ground to a pin and ground of the mini usb plug. I can't imagine there is a transformer, voltage regulator, or anything of that nature in a vehicle charger, but I don't know for sure.

Most are, yes.

All will convert the 12+VDC to 5V DC. The power output of USB is 5V DC, that's what the phone expects, so you wouldn't want to charge at 12+ V DC right? Because of the regulator required, there will be a max charging current. These range from 500mA to 1A typically.

The difference, and many not apply here, is the USB charging spec. In the USB charging spec, it expects the data wires to be shorted to one another at the connector. When one end sees that the data lines are shorted, it will allow powering at rates which exceed the regular USB specification (+1.5A)

The spec is here: USB.org - Approved Device Class Document Download

It's doubtful that our phones support the charging spec v1.2, as it's very new (Dec 2010). I suspect they will charge at the same rate with a data cable vs a dedicated charger (d+/- pins shorted or not).

Not sure what you're after or what you're getting at, but I hope that helps.

 

[LocrianGroove]

Yes, that is very helpful, Crunch140. Thank you for the info.