How come sometimes my phone charges faster than others?

SixPapaCharlie

May the force be with you
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I don't understand how i can have a completely dead phone, powered off and there are major differences int he charging time.

This morning, it was dead, I threw it on the charger for about 30 min and I fire it up and it is at nearly 70%

Other times, it will sit on the charger for an hour and only be at 20%

What causes this variation?

My car charger seems to consistently charge it faster than my PC USB port or any of the wall chargers.

Galaxy 3 btw
 
PC USB ports are limited to about 500ma charging current. Your wall chargers and car chargers are typically 800-1900ma (1900 being the general maximum rate the device will take). Furthermore, the device will charge about twice as fast with it powered off. When the device is on, it is using power as your charge. With the device off, every last milliamp is charging the battery.

Also, cheap crap chargers often charge slowly. They advertise a nice high charging rate, but actually don't do jack. That's what happens when they're made by a 4yr old in a sweatshop in china.
 
A big key to how fast the phone charges while you have it on is what apps are running.

For example, if I have Ingress running which uses the GPS, a decent amount of data, and has some graphics, even having my phone plugged into a 2,000 ma charging port, my battery drains faster than it can charge.

Remember that just because you exit out of an app doesn't mean it's stopped running. It can still be processing in the background draining your battery. Most apps are written well enough that the drain is minimal, but some apps are poorly written and keep the processor in your phone from going to sleep.

Sometimes in Android I have to go into the Settings menu and force stop an app (looking at you Skype) to actually stop it from running despite everything else saying the app is closed.
 
Sometimes in Android I have to go into the Settings menu and force stop an app (looking at you Skype) to actually stop it from running despite everything else saying the app is closed.

Yep, I do with phone apps had close buttons like EVERY COMPUTER IN THE WORLD HAS HAD FOR THE LAST 30 YEARS!!!

sorry, this is something that has annoyed me since smart phones became a thing.
 
Yep, I do with phone apps had close buttons like EVERY COMPUTER IN THE WORLD HAS HAD FOR THE LAST 30 YEARS!!!

sorry, this is something that has annoyed me since smart phones became a thing.

I ran a task killer application and I swear after it would kill the running applications they would self start just to be killed again 30 minutes later. They make it hard to shut stuff down.
 
Yep, I do with phone apps had close buttons like EVERY COMPUTER IN THE WORLD HAS HAD FOR THE LAST 30 YEARS!!!

sorry, this is something that has annoyed me since smart phones became a thing.

Yeah, it is a little frustrating. Android has a decent solution for it, better than Apple's the last time I used an iPhone. The big problem is you don't know exactly what you're closing, or to what extent you're shutting it down, when you close an app on a smartphone or tablet.

And in all fairness, I think Skype is the only app I've had serioues issues with, but they're starting to **** me off in general. Their Android app keeps me logged in even if I tell it to log me out so I have to force stop it like I said before. But their Windows app refuses to close as well. You click on 'Quit Skype' and it just sits there, you have to go into Task Manager to close it. I'm really not a fan of Microsoft right now.
 
The transformer output in your charger brick could be lower amperage, the cabling may not support the load, there's a few reasons...
 
Put it in airplane mode or turn it off if you want it to charge faster. There is also a pretty wide variation in charge rate with different wall chargers, or if you have a problematic charging cable.
 
I wondered the same thing myself, and after reading the other thread about charging issues on iPads in flight, I ordered a USB meter/monitor ($13 - see link below). Now I don't feel like a caveman every time I plug in to any of the way-too-many chargers I've accumulated over the years. And I'm steadily eliminating chargers that don't provide the output I'm looking for. For once, one of the purely geeky gadgets I've bought has some immediate practical use. My wife would be proud of me. (actually she would roll her eyes and laugh) :yes:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J3JSEG6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
 
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