Doesn't matter to me much. I charge my note with official one at home, iphone charger at work. I will get this for backup just in case.

This is really simple (if you have root), all you need to do is plug in your charger and then type this into a terminal...

cat /sys/class/power_supply/battery/batt_current_adc

This will tell you the actual charging milliamps (divide by 10) of whatever charger you are claiming goes over 1amp, which I am skeptical of, but would love to be proven wrong. Just post a screen shot here...

I think anything over 1amp is probably not very healthy at all for the life of the battery, but batteries are easy enough to replace on this phone if it only lasts 6 months from such high charging rates.

Heat is another issue too, excessive charging rates will produce more heat than anticipated and the internal circuitry with stop the charging process. Maybe not an issue in an air conditioned room, but certainly an issue in a car in the summer.

Since the Galaxy Note with GPS and the screen active consumes about 900ma I can see where it would be beneficial to have charging rates in excess of 1 amp.

Originally Posted by omniphil

This is really simple (if you have root), all you need to do is plug in your charger and then type this into a terminal...

cat /sys/class/power_supply/battery/batt_current_adc

Exactly. Although one should note that the value reported is the inbound current measured in tenths of a milliamp. It does not take into account simultaneous drain, which is what most widgets try to estimate with varying degrees of accuracy. So you could be running a power-hungry benchmark while charging, and batt_current_adc will still show "10020" (i.e., 1 A), etc. even though the battery itself might be slowly draining.

This will tell you the actual charging milliamps (divide by 10) of whatever charger you are claiming goes over 1amp, which I am skeptical of, but would love to be proven wrong. Just post a screen shot here...

I have never seen that counter go over 10000, give or take a couple of milliamps.

Since the Galaxy Note with GPS and the screen active consumes about 900ma I can see where it would be beneficial to have charging rates in excess of 1 amp.

In fact, the Note can consume more than 1 amp. Imagine running Google Navigation at full display brightness and GPS enabled, with audio streaming in a poor 3G or 4G signal area, and the phone paired to your car stereo over Bluetooth. That's about 1.2 A or more right there.

I accidentlly order two and I called them about it. I guess they got lazy or something because they said that they were refunding one but I am still receiving two for 5. Woot!!!!!.

Apparently the data lines have to be shorted to allow faster charging....
http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1519084

My time is more valuable than a battery.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using xda app-developers app

THANX BUDDY, I JUST ORDERED ONE. I BOUGHT A MICRO USB CABLE FROM WALMART FOR $9.96 AND THIS IS USB CABLE + POWER ADAPTER. IT IS A GOOD PRICE FOR A GOOD PRODUCT.

Originally Posted by dx.varun

This have been discussed hundreds time before....

That 1amp is the output of the charger which forwards the current to kernel of the device... NOTE can only intake 1 amp current... ( remove your battery and read the dam sticker :thumbup

Even though you will supply 2 3 4 5 amp... The maximum in would be 1 amp ONLY...

SECONDLY, micro usb cables have a restriction of carrying current... They cannot pass more than 1 amp current successfully... Therefore galaxy tab series does not come with micro usb slots....

Lastly my recommendation would be NOT to waste money on any other chargers...

Noted by the BEAST!!

electronics class anybody?

it's not the battery's current that decides how much current the note can utilize when plugged in.

a) the charger is powering a circuit in the note, not the battery itself. the circuit in the note decides how much current it can use. it's not set by the battery or it's markings, it's set by this circuit and you and I both don't know what the actual spec is on that (the regulator would be so small that I personally wouldn't be able to see or recognize any writing on it I'm sure, although if these were all full size components then I'd have no problem working out what the true current capability would be).

b) the charger may, depending on the design of the above circuit, be powering both a charging circuit for the battery AND the phone directly itself, as in many LG phones. in which case the phone's current requirement would be IN ADDITION to the battery's charging current requirement. In which case if the battery truly does max out at 1 amp charging input then providing more than 1 amp to the phone would be a very good idea since the phone would otherwise be stealing some of that 1 amp from the charger before it even gets to the battery's charging circuit.

c) a microUSB capable has no maximum cutoff of current it can deliver - it's not hard set. I imagine you know that, however the way you worded it sounds like the cable will cut off anything above 1 amp. This is not true. it will start to heat up over a certain amount of current, and eventually it will fail. What the current is depends strongly on the quality of cable, however. I'm holding onto an LG microUSB power cable right now that certainly has much thicker casing than the samsung cable, although of course the wiring inside may be of any random gauge. The point though is that it's the gauge of the wire that matters. The connector may be very fine with microUSB but it will just fail sooner rather than later if there is too much current draw. The current will still get to the device for the most part, even if it's somewhat higher than 1 amp.

d) I too have seen proof of very clearly faster charging performance when I charged my NOTE using an iPad ac charger compared to the stock samsung charger.

e) I'll tell ya - the samsung charger is awfully small to be providing 1 amp... I'd be surprised if it's actually providing that much current. If it is then fine, but it's pretty likely to me that it's providing less than 1 amp despite it's spec. If it is then using a GOOD quality charger that can provide AT LEAST 1 amp in reality will definitely charge your note faster.

I hope that clarifies things guys.

Based on the above info and my own tests, even if my ipad charger is only being used for a solid 1 amp draw from the note due to the possibility of that being the actual limit set by the power circuit in the note (again we do NOT know the note's current spec purely based on the spec written on the note's battery), it did charge the note faster so that would indicate that the samsung charger isn't performing up to spec. Either that or the note actually can draw more than 1 amp and push it towards a faster charge when available.

---------- Post added at 09:38 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:36 AM ----------

Originally Posted by taob

Exactly. Although one should note that the value reported is the inbound current measured in tenths of a milliamp. It does not take into account simultaneous drain, which is what most widgets try to estimate with varying degrees of accuracy. So you could be running a power-hungry benchmark while charging, and batt_current_adc will still show "10020" (i.e., 1 A), etc. even though the battery itself might be slowly draining.


I have never seen that counter go over 10000, give or take a couple of milliamps.


In fact, the Note can consume more than 1 amp. Imagine running Google Navigation at full display brightness and GPS enabled, with audio streaming in a poor 3G or 4G signal area, and the phone paired to your car stereo over Bluetooth. That's about 1.2 A or more right there.

excellent info, thanks for that everybody. I didn't read far enough to see this really cool detail.

Well done :D

Originally Posted by dkelley

electronics class anybody?

it's not the battery's current that decides how much current the note can utilize when plugged in.

a) the charger is powering a circuit in the note, not the battery itself. the circuit in the note decides how much current it can use. it's not set by the battery or it's markings, it's set by this circuit and you and I both don't know what the actual spec is on that (the regulator would be so small that I personally wouldn't be able to see or recognize any writing on it I'm sure, although if these were all full size components then I'd have no problem working out what the true current capability would be).

b) the charger may, depending on the design of the above circuit, be powering both a charging circuit for the battery AND the phone directly itself, as in many LG phones. in which case the phone's current requirement would be IN ADDITION to the battery's charging current requirement. In which case if the battery truly does max out at 1 amp charging input then providing more than 1 amp to the phone would be a very good idea since the phone would otherwise be stealing some of that 1 amp from the charger before it even gets to the battery's charging circuit.

c) a microUSB capable has no maximum cutoff of current it can deliver - it's not hard set. I imagine you know that, however the way you worded it sounds like the cable will cut off anything above 1 amp. This is not true. it will start to heat up over a certain amount of current, and eventually it will fail. What the current is depends strongly on the quality of cable, however. I'm holding onto an LG microUSB power cable right now that certainly has much thicker casing than the samsung cable, although of course the wiring inside may be of any random gauge. The point though is that it's the gauge of the wire that matters. The connector may be very fine with microUSB but it will just fail sooner rather than later if there is too much current draw. The current will still get to the device for the most part, even if it's somewhat higher than 1 amp.

d) I too have seen proof of very clearly faster charging performance when I charged my NOTE using an iPad ac charger compared to the stock samsung charger.

e) I'll tell ya - the samsung charger is awfully small to be providing 1 amp... I'd be surprised if it's actually providing that much current. If it is then fine, but it's pretty likely to me that it's providing less than 1 amp despite it's spec. If it is then using a GOOD quality charger that can provide AT LEAST 1 amp in reality will definitely charge your note faster.

I hope that clarifies things guys.

Based on the above info and my own tests, even if my ipad charger is only being used for a solid 1 amp draw from the note due to the possibility of that being the actual limit set by the power circuit in the note (again we do NOT know the note's current spec purely based on the spec written on the note's battery), it did charge the note faster so that would indicate that the samsung charger isn't performing up to spec. Either that or the note actually can draw more than 1 amp and push it towards a faster charge when available.

---------- Post added at 09:38 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:36 AM ----------



excellent info, thanks for that everybody. I didn't read far enough to see this really cool detail.

Well done :D

Wowser everyone! LOL. I don't know the full details to what this HP charger has or how our Notes can ingest current from the charger, but from real world use, this charger seems to provide a faster charge from 15% to 80% than the stock Samsung charger.

I appreciate all the input. It definitely makes me think about how things work and what factors to look for. Thanks for all the replies.

Either way, this is a solid charger for dirt cheap. The barrel is kinda big tho, but it shouldn't matter too much, unless you plan on using it as a travel charger.

I have been on a "quest" to find a good charger for a long time...

I have tried multiple cables and chargers and monitoring the charge using BatteryMonitor app (Widget showing the Amperage). I tried charging when the battery is less than 50% and more than 50%.

This is what I found out:

I. Samsung Note OEM charger:
- With Samsung Note OEM cable: 1100mA
- WITHOUT OEM cable: 400-500mA

II. HTC Thunderbolt OEM charger:
- With Samsung Note OEM cable: 1100mA
- WITHOUT OEM cable: 400-500mA

III. No-name brand dock (bought from Amazon):
- WITHOUT OEM cable: 400-500mA (cannot use Samsung OEM cable)

The Note takes LESS than 500mA when the battery is above 80%, indicating that the Note is "slowing down" the charge.

I just ordered the HP Touchpad charger that was on sale a couple days ago, so hopefully this is as good as the Samsung Note OEM charger.

My biggest problem are:
- Car charger: this is where my Note, connected to the Samsung OEM car dock, have GPS ON, Navigation running, BT ON and brightness at 75%. I have tried Samsung OEM car charger, Satechi charger, Motorola charger and NONE can charge the Note while the above is running.
- Micro USB cable: as seen above, the cable itself make a difference. I am yet to find a long USB cable replacement that can still give 1100mA while connected tot he Samsung OEM charger.

If anyone can give me insight on the 2 problems above, feel free to share.

RE: point e) in DKelly's post, yeah the samsung charger is small, but so is the Apple iPhone unit. both output up to 1A. they are also quality chargers.

the knockoff ones from Dealextreme/ebay etc... are not of equal quality. the Apple unit costs over $30 and for good reason. there are high grade components inside and tons of R&D in the design. cut open a generic clone, its all garbage stuff, poor solder joints etc.

size is not necessarily an indicator of quality or output.

that said $5 is awesome for a high quality charger AND cable. By the way, the North american prongs can be unlocked and switched for other ones like for the UK etc. its a world charger. make sure its twisted on good or it wont charge. it will click solidly.