Charging Efficiency

[goldberg96]

Hi all. Today I had my S4 in the car connected to a car charger (3A charger). I was using the Music app and did some navigation using GPS.

It seemed like the phone was using up battery faster than it could charge. I have never had this problem with a cell phone before. How am I supposed to use navigation is the charging process can't keep up with the drain.

Anybody else experiencing this? Suggestions?

Thanks

 

[gAlaXys4]

Make sure to use Samsung OEM USB cable, makes a difference if you're using after market cable. Is your charger reliable one? You can install Galaxy charging current lite to see if you're getting enough juice (not 100% accurate but you can definetely see the difference when you're using non-OEM charger or cable)

 

[mhunter6378]

Hi all. Today I had my S4 in the car connected to a car charger (3A charger). I was using the Music app and did some navigation using GPS.

It seemed like the phone was using up battery faster than it could charge. I have never had this problem with a cell phone before. How am I supposed to use navigation is the charging process can't keep up with the drain.

Anybody else experiencing this? Suggestions?

Thanks

You indicated the charger you are using is ( 3amp ), are you saying that is the output? Most car chargers typically output .5 amps, typical ac chargers output 1.0 amp and the ac charger that comes with the S4 outputs 2.0 amps. In my experience even under heavy load a 1.0 amp charger will not only keep up but increase charge under these conditions. You may want to have a look at your car charger. Either it's output is not as high as indicated or it's faulty.

 

[jasonb]

Yea, a 1 amp charger should work fine. I have two different 1 amp chargers that I use with my S4 and both work fine and charge the phone rapidly enough.

Plugging the S4 into a laptop's USB 2.0 port is another story. The battery will still drain if you are charging USB and using the phone at the same time.

 

[garublador]

Make sure to use Samsung OEM USB cable, makes a difference if you're using after market cable. Is your charger reliable one? You can install Galaxy charging current lite to see if you're getting enough juice (not 100% accurate but you can definetely see the difference when you're using non-OEM charger or cable)

An OEM cable is not necessary. The Samsung OEM USB cable is a standard USB cable. There is nothing special about it.

My guess is that it has to do with the charger. Is it an iPhone compatable charger? They use a different mechanism to indicate that they are a charger rather than a 0.5A USB port. A special cable may be needed to charge at full current if that is the case, but it's not anything specific to Samsung and it is different than a Samsung OEM cable (FWIW it's just a standard USB cable with the data lines shorted together).



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