The question: Cell phone battery rechargers - at least, the dozen or so I’ve looked at online - have two contacts. The battery of my cell phone (a Kyocera Kona from Virgin Mobile) has three. Do I need a recharger with three contacts? If I only need one with two contacts, how would I know which contacts on the battery to match them up to?
Background: the phone works fine as long as it’s got a charged battery in it. But when I put it on the recharger that plugs directly into the phone, it doesn’t recharge. In fact, it seems to actually drain the battery further. That could mean a problem with the recharger itself, or with the part of the phone that handles the recharging. Either way, if I can recharge the batteries (good thing I had a spare!) outside the phone, that would solve the problem.
In the meantime, I’ve ordered a new recharger that plugs into the phone, since they’re only a few bucks.
In the absence of other comments, I’ll throw out an opinion.
I don’t own a Kyocera Kona/S2150 myself, but I see it uses a standard micro USB cable. I have several charging cables that came with devices that do not allow me to transfer data, but do allow me to charge the device. I normally replace all these with standard USB cables (usually fabric-covered ones, as I like them) and toss out the original cables. (I don’t need extra cables floating around that are unusual in some respect.) In every single case, the replacement cable charges just fine using a standard wall-wart or computer USB port as a source. Maybe you want to borrow a real, full-function micro USB cable to verify proper operation? If it does, buy a few extras and toss out what came with the phone.
I’m giving it a try right now, with the charger cord for my Kindle, which is the same size. We’ll see what it does.
Funny, though - when you said “I see it uses a standard micro USB cable,” my initial reaction was “WTF? There’s a ‘standard’ size? Every damn electronic gizmo I own takes a different size and shape of USB plug.” But because you said that, I went and checked, and sure enough, the Kindle and the Kyocera take the same size USB.
The phone’s only been on the Kindle’s charging cord for 5 minutes or so, so I haven’t had time to see if this works, but I’ll post back in a couple of hours. Whether it works or not, thanks for the suggestion!
A phone on a Kindle charger should be just fine, but a Kindle on a phone charger might only charge very slowly. They’re all five volts, but some have higher current limits than others.
Nearly all devices these days use standard micro USB cables. It’s only very recently that USB-C has started to make inroads in the market. Are your devices very old or very new?
You are exaggerating. There are only 3 types of USB connectors for portable devices: Mini-USB, Micro-USB and USB-C. And mini-USB has been obsolete now for many years; you won’t see it on new gadgets unless that gadget’s been on the market for many years and they haven’t bothered to redesign it.
Micro-USB is dominant. Almost all non-Apple phones use Micro-USB. Most things that are charged by USB (e-book readers, Bluetooth headphones, Bluetooth speakers, etc) use micro-USB.
USB-C is a new standard that is starting to become common, and has many advantages. It can be plugged in in either direction. It has enough data throughput for 4K video. And it can supply enough power to charge a laptop - and because it’s compatible with Thunderbolt-3, it can charge most newer laptops that have Thunderbolt-3 ports. Which means we finally have a standard charger connector that work on phones and laptops. I already use the same chargers to charge my 15.6" laptop, my 12" Windows tablet, my 10" Android tablet and my phone .
Not quite true. The Lego robotics system uses a mini-USB. And it’s not just a holdover from the previous version, because the previous version used the square plug like printers use (that’s USB-B?).
I don’t have this situation with a cell phone batttery, BUT I do have it with my camera battery. The USB charger stopped working and I bought a “universal” battery charger.
Have a close look at your phone battery, there should be a “+ and -” on two of the contacts. I have no idea what the third contact is for (but every one of my camera batteries has one). If the battery isn’t labeled, I’d check out replacement batteries online. I’ve found they label the batteries better than the OEM.
This is my set-up:
I set the battery on the charger and lock it into place with a slide clamp. It then has two adjustable (sliding) pins but all my batteries have three contacts. The charger contacts have in small molded plastic “+” and “-”. If you look closely on the battery itself, one contact should be labeled positive and one negative. That’s it. Just adjust them so they line up and as soon as they make contact they start charging.
My charger has protection built-in so that if you put the battery in the wrong way (typically flipped upside down where the + and - meet the wrong contacts) the unit flashes you with an error message. You can’t screw it up.
Don’t forget that weird-o 10-pin version of the Mini-USB used for USB3.0 hubs. But I’ve literally only ever seen it on USB 3.0 hubs. Why that cable exists, I have no idea.
That’s a Micro-USB 3.0 port. And it’s backwards compatible with the standard micro-USB - i.e. you can insert a standard micro-USB plug into the larger half of that port, and it’ll still work. It’ll work faster (higher data transfer rate) with the full 10-pin cable.
Apart from USB hubs, it’s also common on portable hard drives. A few phones also used it, like the Samsung Galaxy S5.
A and B serve different roles. They are on the opposite ends of the cable - the A connector plugs into the host, the B connector plugs into the peripheral. Power flows from A to B (i.e. the A port on a computer or hub outputs power, and the B port on a peripheral receives power).
Mini-USB and Micro-USB are really Mini-B and Micro-B. Except smartphones have a kludge called USB On-The-Go, which means it can use the Micro-B port as a host port.
USB-C is different, it uses the same connector on both sides.