Phone charger ?

Factual Questions
1

I have a Blackberry charger with these output specs 5V 700mA. So 5 volts and 700 miliamps.

I recently purchased a Verison MiFi Mobil Hotspot. The charger for it is 5V 1.1A. So 5 volts and 1.1 amps. (1.1 amps seems high to me.)

Anyway, could I use the lower rated BlackBerry charger, that has the same volts but lower amps to safely charge the Mobil Hotspot device?

Thanks

2

I think you could. It would just take longer. (Assuming it physically fits.)

But why wouldn’t you just use the charger that came with the Hotspot device?

3

Thanks. The hotspot travels with me. If I can use my phone charger, that’s one less thing to screw around with. And I also leave a phone charger at work. It would be nice to not have to have a seperate charger for the hotspot there too.

I would guess the only thing I could hurt would be the battery.

4

Moving to GQ from IMHO.

5

I wouldn’t think it would hurt your battery. It’s just that if your hotspot draws more charging current than the Blackberry, the charger could get too hot.

One nice thing that I’ve noticed about Blackberrys is that they’ll accept any charger with a USB mini-B connector. My car GPS and my wife’s old Motorola phone both have the same connectors, but the Motorola phone refused to charge with anything other than a Motorola charger, and the Magellan GPS refused to charge with anything other than the Magellan charger. My Blackberry happily accepts any of them.

6

Thanks.

OK, I plugged it in and it seems fine. When charging, the battery symbol has 4 lines that sort of climb up the battery. They just aren’t moving as fast is all I can tell.

I’ll keep my eye on the heat.

7

I think you actually want to use the MiFi charger for both devices. The Blackberry will only draw the .7 amps it needs, so it’s fine with the 1.1 amp charger, but the MiFi will attempt to pull 1.1 amps from the Blackberry charger and could overheat it.

8

Cool. I’ll figure out where I need to do the most charging of both devices, and work that way.

The MiFi is new to me, and I’m not sure how much I’ll use it. I think a lot though. Works great as my only other option (at least at home) is satellite, and while it works fine, speed and the amount allowed to download before throttling is severly limited.

9

I use my kindle charger to charge my Blackberry Style.

10

1 Amp sounds a lot but it isn’t. At 5 volts the power delivered is just 5 watts. 1 amp chargers are the standard nowadays because smartphones are power hogs.

Actually this can be a problem because a standard USB port delivers according to specs 0.5 amps at 5 volts but this is not enough to charge a smartphone while it is turned on. My HTC Desire will charge very slowly when the battery is over 50% and will not charge at all if it is below 50%.

Now most new computer motherboards can deliver more than 0.5 amp at least at the front panel USB ports

11

While actively doing RF, like when on a phone call, it’s hard to charge with a 500mA source. Almost any other time, your phone should be drawing considerably less than 500mA. An idle phone trying to charge should have no issue charging with USB 2.0 limits. It might take a long time because the battery is large.

[QUOTE=Dog80]
Now most new computer motherboards can deliver more than 0.5 amp at least at the front panel USB ports
[/QUOTE]

True. Most computer motherboards wire Vusb into the power supply ‘almost’ directly. You can draw much more than 500mA if you try..although it violates the USB spec. Of course, many modern phones aren’t technically* USB compliant, so this isn’t always an issue.
*They follow most aspects of the spec, but don’t actually go through formal certification. Look for the USB logo on the box, phone, or manual.
-D/a