I have a Samsung Galaxy 10.1 charger and my wife hs an iphone/ipad charger. Both plugs support usb. Question is: Do both usb plugs work with either device?
The iPhone/iPad charger should charge the Galaxy, but not necessarily the converse.
The Apple chargers put out a lot more current than standard USB chargers, so they can rapidly charge big devices like the iPad. The voltage is the same, though, so it won’t hurt the Galaxy.
Except for early devices, mostly in the mini-USB days (now largely replaced by micro-USB), all USB chargers work with all USB devices. Some are more powerful than others - I just had an incident where a borrowed charger actually slowly drained an iPad - but all should work to some degree or another.
There were some early phones and gadgets that (pointlessly) used special wiring and pinouts to force you to use only O-Fishal chargers. Haven’t run into that in years. They CAN be taught…
I think the Galaxy tablet will come with a high-amp charger too. The 7" version I have did anyways. It will charge on a normal USB charger, but at a greatly reduced rate (it shows the battery with a red lighting bolt to indicate that). Also if you kill the battery completely I’ve found you can’t revive it without a high-amp charger.
What about using the iPad/iPhone USB cord to download photos to my PC? Anyone with this experience?
All USB plugs/ports put out a standard 5VDC. The amps can vary, they’re usually written on the adapter itself. I think they start at .5 amps with the cheapest adapters (which is often not enough for most phones etc.) Because they’re money-grubbing fascists Apple puts special chips in their adapters simply so their devices will only work with their (overly expensive) chargers. However, as long as you’ve got a genuine Apple cable plugged into the device and it has a USB plug at the other end of it, it shouldn’t matter what USB adapter that gets plugged into (as long as it provides enough amps).
I’ve had an iPhone 4 and 5 and they will both allow the downloading of photos/videos to a Windows PC via the USB cable. Note however that those are the **ONLY **things it will allow to transfer without jailbreaking. And only photos/videos that you actually took with that iPhone. It won’t transfer any cloud-based or downloaded pics or videos…
Not true. Never has been. I buy all my cables and chargers from Monoprice and they work just fine with all my Apple devices.
I think most “smart” devices nowadays have internal voltage regulators that condition the signal once it’s in the phone. I certainly can mix and match my HTC and Asus and Samsung devices and chargers with no problems (all Android). Haven’t tried with any Apple products, though.
Yes, I have experience with that, with my iPhone 4s and Windows 7 PC. If I connect the phone to the USB charger cable (connected to a USB port on the PC) and there are photos on the phone, the pop-up window will appear in Windows asking me what I want to do with these pictures. I can copy them to the computer.
Note that while all USB chargers should provide a steady DC 5 volts, some of the cheap ones are really sloppy about it, and can cause temporary or permanent harm to your device (the most common symptom is that the touch screen doesn’t work while it’s plugged in). This is mostly a problem with the cheap knockoffs that look almost just like a big-name one but cost a fraction of the price: Apple’s own chargers are very high-quality, and Samsung’s are probably pretty good, too.
Actually you both are partially correct. Apple does now include chips within their latest “lightning” adapters. Using a cable without the chip doesn’t prohibit the device (iPhone or iPad) from charging or working. You will normally get an alert that says the cable you are using is not actual Apple product and may not work as intended. The primary purpose for the chips is so that if your cable stops working and you take it back to an Apple store, the store personnel can scan it to see if it includes the chip and they can determine if it is an actual Apple product or a “fake” one. On the old cables they lost a lot of money exchanging new real cable for defective “fake” cables without knowing they were fake. The chip solves this problem.
Not true in my experience. If you get the “this cable or accesory may not work as intended” alert popping up, the phone does not charge.
Annoyingly something seems to have happened to my Lightning port and it only works with the cable one way round, whichever cable I use (even with a brand new official cable).
Is there a simple way to find out how many amps are put out from the USB ports on my pc? I remember hearing that the ones in the front are stronger or weaker than the ones in the back, and I keep forgetting which.
Does anyone make a “power meter” app? I could run it while my device is charging, and it would say something like “You are now connected to a 5 amp power source”. That would be great.
“may” being the operative word. Some non-Apple cords work, some don’t.
By spec, USB 2.0 ports are allowed to provide up to 500mA, after a negotiation step. If you have a laptop, this is probably what you’ll experience. I’ve seen some laptops that will only provide 100mA when running on battery power.
Most desktop PCs that I’ve dealt with tie the USB voltage directly to the 5V power supply, which allows them to source much higher current - they’ll effectively provide as much as the device tries to draw.
To answer your question: Your PC provides as much current as the device requests, up to the PC’s limitations. So in theory, it could vary based on what you have plugged in. There are devices that will measure the amount for you - I had one back when I was doing power management code for a cell phone company.