Well, I feel pretty darn confident concurring with you that all cables are about the same (four wires), aside from construction quality differences. The AmazonBasics cable I bought is sturdy, with nice solid connectors (which I think is doubly important for such a tiny, fragile thing as Micro-USB).
But I had to read up on USB (as much as Wikipedia has) to understand the note about shorting out D- and D+ for a device to recognize the connection as a charging port, vice data port. Those data ports are supposedly used for negotiation of power consumption with a host hub; shorting, I have to guess, tells a device like the phone, "Oh, it's not a data port, it's a charger/charging port that can give me the whole hog 1000mA I crave. It's a juice trough, all mine mine mine...."
I'm not sure how reliable the information on the phone is (T-mobile's
My Device app's
Battery information section, or the Android info at
Settings | About Phone | Battery), but when I plug the phone into my Thinkpad's USB port, both state "Charging (USB)."
I then plugged it in to a Duracell car/home combo charger, same thing, "Charging (USB)." Same with a Belkin combo power strip/dual-USB charger. I plugged it in to an Apple 5V 1000mA charger (the cute little square white one, with the green dot) which should also provide 1A, but the phone still said "Charging (USB)." Then plugged it into the supplied HTC charger, and the status indicated "Charging (AC)."

It doesn't seem to be charging any faster.... Just for farts and giggles, I tried the "cheap" car charger that Costco's wireless vendor gave me ... it also shows "Charging (AC)."[1]
Short of finding super-thin leads that I could do a short test with my multitester, I remembered that the iPod has a diagnostic boot menu ... sure enough the Power menu has USBDP and USBDN tests ... I connected to an Apple charger and found iirc roughly 1700mV on the USBDP and 2300mV ON USBDN. I recall reading somewhere that Apple does this for their devices to identify their charger, or something. I put the iPod on the HTC charger ... 0mV and 0mV on USBDP and USBDN
I can't say how many watts are being sucked from any of the chargers. I
'm looking for a widget that might disclose that ... if the phone even knows has a sensor for its charging wattage.
BTW, not *all* chargers are alike, iPad chargers are 10W chargers, i.e. 5V @ 2000mA. If you plug an iPad into a conventional Apple 1000mA charger, and leave it on, I understand it will tell you "Not charging." You have to turn the thing off and ... leave it for a few hours. Some confusion about this
[1] For years I'd liked that Nokia billed their car chargers, and premium varieties of AC chargers, as "rapid charge" chargers, and they certainly seemed to charge my phones quicker. Handy indeed for either application, in which the time that a phone would be "plugged in" could be assumed to be briefer.