Mobile charging mobile phones and netbooks

[xcvator]

Don't blame me if this harms/destroys/damages/explodes or anything else that could go wrong as I am totally unqualified to give advice.

Bought an incar phone charger ( you know the 1, looks like a ciggy plug with 2 usb slots in the end) from jcar. Tried it out with my HTC, worked fine, plugged swmbo's iphone in and no go, thought that's odd, went and tried it in 12v ciggy socket on the camper, both phones charged perfectly ( no inverter) so now will somebody try it with a netbook please, I'm not game to 

[Jasman]

Don't think it is going to work sorry mate, USB is 5v and I would think the netbook will be 19v and won't charge off of USB. Though you should be able to buy a 12v power pack for the netbook which will do the voltage conversion for you via a cigarette socket.
Jasman.

[jeb1900]

I've charged my Asus Transformer from a 12v socket similar to that and had no worries.  I would not be worried about it 

[SteveandViv]

All Laptops use different charging voltages so the 12 to 'whatever' converter is a great idea for those theat need more than 12 volts. Quite a few are 19v.

The other issue you can have and the Belkon I-Phone chargers are like this. They do not have enough watt output for the I-Pad, fine with the phone but not the I-Pad. So you need to look not just at the voltage but the watts as well.

My lads get this all the time at work as folk buy a cheap one for who knows where and then ring the hep desk with "my XXX won;t charge - whats' wrong

[griz066]

If you were charging both phones at the same time there probably wasn't enough juice to do the job as the wiring to the cig plug in the car is small and I am guessing the CT has larger wire to the plug. I had the same issue with a tripple cig plug I once had, the first 2 plugs worked but whatever I plugged into the 3rd would not work. They would all work individually but not all together. If you get me.

[Mandrake]

I have some small USB / ciggy plug adapters - One has 500mA output and will JUST maintain my Chinese iPad/phone the other is a 1 Amp job which gets a bit warm but will charge it .. My adapter in car which has 3 cig holes plus USB is just about useless for anything so it has been removed ...
If you want one of the 1 Amp jobs let me know and I'll post it to you - I had to buy 4 from memory ...

Cheers

Steve

[austastar]

Hi,
  this is second hand info - so do a bit of research before you do anything.


My son has a smart phone that will use more current  than the charger will provide if he is running google maps and the gps on the phone. And this is of a cigarette plug to usb charger.


Apparently the phone will limit its current draw unless it know it is on a high current charger. How does it know this, well apparently the 2 data wires are bridged.


What he did was sacrifice a cable by cutting it in half, joining/bridging the wires that go to pin 2 and 3 on the phone side, and re connecting the other 2 wires that provide the power.


Now it will charge and navigate with out drawing down the battery.


As I said above - check this out before doing it, this info is from a conversation some months ago and I may have not got everything correct.


cheers

[jeb1900]

I use one of these jobbies when I want to give some serious charge to my laptop or my camera.  Same too for the mobile. 

http://tentworld.com.au/products/power/item/Waeco-150W-Can-Size-Inverter.aspx

[Crisp Image]

Our Galaxy Tab 10.1's wall socket puts out 5v 2A max. Most of my usb chargers in the car will do 1A max so I will be looking for a 2A 12 jugger for the car and camper. There are several on the bay of E's that state one socket for Ipad and one lower powered socket. These will charge 2 phones at once or 1 ipad (or similar)
As for my net book it runs on straight 12v from the socket (EEEPC) with no converters. That is why I bought it.
Regards
Crisp Image

[Chris F]

I use one of these for my laptop
http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=MP3324
So far I haven't needed an inverter for anything, including TV.

[Matto]

I'm on the hunt for some 12V converters myself - was going to drop into Jaycar and pick their brains. I need to run an iphone speaker dock all night, and this last weekend running it off the inverter just hammered the batteries too hard. I'm sure I can knock up a 12v-to-whatever powerpack quite cheaply. Likewise for the laptop, etc.

Aside: the iPads and the low-current chargers - keep in mind that if you hook up your iPad and it says "Not Charging" up the top, it's actually lying. It *is* charging, just very slowly. Turn off the display/put it to sleep, and you'll get a much higher rate of charge. Not as much as a proper high-current charger, but enough to get you out of trouble. When an iPad is connected to external power it uses that in preference to it's battery, and with a low-current charger it will use most of the available juice to run the display (especially if you have a retina-display ipad).

Cheers!
Matto

[Wazza2]

You could try these buck converters. This one is 5V 3A.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/280917790445?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649#ht_3970wt_752

I have several of them just arrived.

 Will test them on the weekend and post up how the go.