Gadgetory

whether you're using Android iOS or even windows phone there's one thing that unites us all I'm Joe levian on this episode of the pocket now power user we're going to talk about chargers the why summer faster than others this topic comes from Natalie and Kristen turns out Kristen bought a brand new phone charger that charges her phone about twice as fast as Natalie's in wall charger what gives that's a great question but first we got to talk a little bit about electricity for the most part electricity comes in two different forms alternating current the stuff that comes out of your wall virtually everywhere in the world and direct current direct current is the stuff that we use inside batteries and inside of our mobile devices somehow we've got to convert that AC into DC so that we can charge up our phones I'll use them this conversion happens through what we usually just call a charger but really it comes through something called a rectifier that some people erroneously call an inverter what it does is it takes that alternating current and through a series of circuits and magic turns it into direct current that we then can pipe out into our phone now all of our phones these days use USB or apples equivalent to charge and apples equivalent is essentially the same thing as USB when it comes to power what's different however is voltage and amperage and you know that other stuff so what are those and how do they affect how fast your device charges in electronics there's something called Ohm's lot has to do with how volts amps and ohms that's as much details we're going to go into how they all inner react well we've got two standard this USB power standard that we all use in our devices that dictates how many volts we can have coming into our device and for the most part that's five volts five volts is great that's what comes out of our computers through the USB port so we can charge up our devices when we're transferring data we can charge up our devices when we've got our laptop there all kinds of fun stuff but now we have these direct plugs that plug into our wall convert the power from AC into DC like we've been talking about and then send it across again at five volts so if everything's five volts why do some charge faster than others that's where resistance and amperage come into play now resistance really shouldn't be a big deal unless you've got a really cheap table or a cheap charger so it resistance just like it sounds that's the force pushing back against the flow of electricity from the charger into the device and if you've got a really really bad cable or maybe that connector on the end is loose so it's not making good contact your resistance is going to be higher even though i mentioned resistance first the likelihood that you're going to have resistance in the USB cable that's noticeable or that's problematic is really low what is most likely is you've got low amperage coming out of your charger going through that cable into your device the lower the amps the slower the charge generally speaking the more amps that you push into the device the faster it'll charge there are a couple caveats there your device is only capable of accepting a certain amount of amps you remember that booklet that you throw away you know the Quick Start Guide and whatnot it probably tells you in there what the maximum amperage is that your device can use don't see that or you're going to be damaging things and ultimately shortening the life of your charging circuits and probably your battery to another thing that you need to keep in mind is that charger can only do so much so let's take a look at the charger and see and i'm going to read right off of this there are two different sections on this this one happens to be an LG travel charger so if I look down at this it says that it is a 100 to 240 volts 50 to 60 Hertz and what that means that's the alternating current I can plug this in anywhere from a socket that outputs a hundred volts all the way up to 120 volts ac that covers an awful lot of people and as long as your outlet has prongs that look just like that you're probably safe you know better than I do in your country and there are a lot of countries with a lot of standards so don't take this as we'll just keep that in mind the next part is the frequency 50 to 60 Hertz different places in the world use different frequencies for alternating current that's how fast the current moves back and forth in the line 50 to 60 Hertz so that charger will handle anything in that range which is good because even in the United States where we're 60 Hertz sometimes we get a bit less than that after 30 power and whatnot comes through so it's nice to have a little bit of wiggle room the next part and this might confuse people it says right here that this is 0.2 amps well crap that doesn't sound like a lot 0.2 that's hardly any amps I'd throw that out right no and here's why that's the AC side of things so it's drawing 0.2 amps alternating current and then it's going to convert it into direct current so let's see the next line down what the direct current does reading here it says output is 5 volts 5 volts direct current that's good at 0.85 amps 0.85 so not quite 1 amp that's just fine it's 0.85 that's a lot better than half an amp that's a lot better than 0.2 amps AC right but we're converting it over so your device if it supports anything up to 0.85 amps I can use this charger not a problem just plug it in and go we're good however it might not charge all that fast if my device can accept up to two amps I can get a charger that's twice as amperage E as that and charge my device twice as fast roughly so that's where the concern and confusion comes in some of the devices that you get to charge up your devices will charge it to amps summit one summit one and a half so I'm at point eight five like that one does and some even at half an amp so keep that in mind and get the highest amperage that you can get as long as your device supports it that last part is the important part that will people overlook and why do people overlook it I'll get a rapid charger i can plug in the wall and it'll charge up my device twice as fast as something else but it might be ruining that device in the process so read those instructions and read those those notations just to make sure that you're using the right amperage you're not going above what it's supposed to be and you'll be safe so that was a great question Natalie and Kristen I appreciate it very much and with that that's going to end our second season of the pocket now power user we hope you enjoyed it if you did make sure you hit the thumbs up button and of course subscribe so you know when the next series is coming out as always for pocket now I'm Joe Levi thanks for watching