Just got a Cool little battery bank to charge tablet and cel phone, but?

[jaideeguy]

I just received in the mail an item that I ordered from amazon that I haven't been able to locate here in CM. It's a

Intocircuit Power Castle Series PC11200 11200mAh Heavy Duty 5V 2A/1A Dual USB Ports External Battery Pack http://www.amazon.com/Intocircuit-PC11200-11200mAh-External-Battery/dp/B00BB5GQRE/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1375956645&sr=8-3&keywords=universal+battery+bank+11200mah

and it has 2 outputs, 1 amp [for cel phones] and 2.1 [for tablets]. seems like a great little gadget with a huge capacity and it's doing it's first charge as I type this.

My question is .....will it do any harm to my cel phone battery to use the 2.1 amp charger for a fast charge??

[hml367]

I saw a lot of external battery packs at K Phone in Airport Plaza. I don't know if they have that particular one. I did purchase one, which looks a little smaller than that, that will charge iPad, iPhone, and Samsung.

[Crossy]

My question is .....will it do any harm to my cel phone battery to use the 2.1 amp charger for a fast charge??

No problem, the phone has its own charge-control circuit which regulates the power going into the battery. It won't hurt to use the bigger outlet, but it probably won't charge any faster either.

[Pib]

My question is .....will it do any harm to my cel phone battery to use the 2.1 amp charger for a fast charge??

No problem, the phone has its own charge-control circuit which regulates the power going into the battery. It won't hurt to use the bigger outlet, but it probably won't charge any faster either.

^^^^what Crossy said. The device (smartphone/tablet) you plug into the charging port is the one in the drivers seat in terms of "requesting X-amount of milliamps be provided to it while charging". The device is the one via its firmware/charging circuit that asks for X-amount of milliamps to be provided to it....and the amount it will ask for will vary throughout the charging cycle. If the device never asks for more than 1A then it don't matter which port it is hooked to as it will receive the 1A from either the 1A or 2.1A port. Now as the battery get bigger, like in a tablet, the device can easily ask for more than 1A....maybe up to around 1.5A to 1.9A. And if the tablet was hooked to the 1A port it would only get 1A vs the 1.5A it is asking for whereas with the 2.1A port it will get the 1.5A. And depending on the quality of the charging device, charging a tablet off the 1A port will pretty much run that port at its full capacity of 1A which may shorten its lifespan. You could build a 10A charger and it wouldn't charge your device no faster than the 2.1A charger/port...and if the device never asked for more than 1A, then that 1A port would charge your device just as fast as the 10A charger.

[jaideeguy]

good to hear that I won't fry my cel phone or my new bank gadget.

I'm now recharging the battery bank off the mains power and the plug into the wall socket is getting quite hot. The % of capacity was @ 85%.................now an hr later it is at 97% and wall charger cooling some.

[Pib]

good to hear that I won't fry my cel phone or my new bank gadget.

I'm now recharging the battery bank off the mains power and the plug into the wall socket is getting quite hot. The % of capacity was @ 85%.................now an hr later it is at 97% and wall charger cooling some.

Yes...your battery bank is controlling the charging rate. A typical charging rate is usually a higher rate until the battery gets up to around 90% charged and then the charge tappers off to a lower value(s) to complete the charge to 100%...in fact the final few percent of charging may be at a pretty low charge current. Charging at full rate all the way up until the battery reaches 100% charge is bad for the battery (places stress on it and reduces its lifespan) and doesn't provide as good of a saturation charge. So, with your charger "cooling off" that is because less charge current is being asked of it.

[jaideeguy]

seems that all my samsung gadgets [and others] hang at 99% and I assume they are at full charge. Is that normal??

[hml367]

The gadget I mentioned buying in post #2 charges 3 different Samsung phones to 100%. Although it has a plugin for iPad and my wife has an iPad, we haven't charged that as of yet.

The gadget I have charges the Samsung phones faster than plugging them into a wall outlet.

MSPain

[Pib]

seems that all my samsung gadgets [and others] hang at 99% and I assume they are at full charge. Is that normal??

When googling there is not shortage of posts with above issue...hat is, not charging to 100%. And its for many/all brands of phones (not just Samsung) and even laptop/notebooks. I saw a several posts which seemed very creditable talking about certain Apple laptops that were designed to only charge the battery to approx. 97% in order to extend its lifespan. And of course you see responses all over the map as to why this happens (i.e, charges to less than 100%) and how to possibly resolve the problem from using Battery Calibration Apps, doing a Factory Reset, using a different charger, and the beat goes on.

The wife and I have 4 Samsung phones...two S4's...and two Ace 2's the S4's replaced...and a Samsung Note 10.1 tablet. And I also have a Onda V971 9.7 inch dual core tablet. All 5 of our Samsung devices charge to 100%. But before we had the Samsung smartphones we had a couple of identical Samsung cell phones (not smartphones) and the wife's phone stopped charging to 100%...it would only go to 99%....I even put the battery from my identical Samsung phone and it would only charge to 99%....but her battery would charge to 100% in my phone. Strange. Anyway, since we used the same Samsung wall charger to charge the phones at night (the 1A charger that came with the phone), I pulled out the other 1A Samsung charger and used it...then the wife's phone would charge to 100%. Just something strange was going on between her phone and that one charger. So I guess you could really say I've had 7 Samsung phones/tablets and they all charge to 100%, except that one time with one of the phones.

Now my Onda V971 dual core tablet has experienced issues in charging to 100% based on the particular factory firmware/ROM or custom firmware/ROM I had loaded. I've probably tried using 6-8 different Jelly Bean factory/custom releases and each one either caused a much higher battery drain than Ice Cream Sandwich or the tablet would not charge to 100%. The latest JB release for my V971 I tried would only charge to 97% most of the time...a few times it got to 100%...but usually it would just charge to 100%. But due to battery issues and some App compatibility issues I always reverted to ICS 4.0.3 which my tablet is very stable on, has 20% higher benchmarks on ICS than JB, has pretty good battery life, and "always" charges to 100%....guess it was just designed to best work with ICS....or the factory/custom ROM developers just since haven't got the firmware quite right for my particular model.

But while I had JB installed on my Onda tablet I did try one or two of those Battery Calibration Apps to see if they would fix the "not charging to 100%" problem and they didn't. Tried a couple other of my 2A chargers I had (like my Samsung chargers)...changed the USB charging cable....none of this helped. But once I reloaded ICS all battery issues went away. It was just something about the firmware....and like mentioned in the other posts the firmware/charging circuit in the tablet is in the driver's seat when it comes to charging---not your charging device (not to imply the charging device might not have a minor effect like being a backseat driver).

You might want to try removing the battery from the device after it has charged to 99%...then put the battery back in and immediately start charging again...maybe do it a second time if the first time don't get it to 100%. This may help bump it to 100%. Even try unplugging the charger and plugging it back in the phone to create a surge effect. If this gets it to 100%, then see what it does later on in a normal charge. Or try another charger just in case you current charger is maybe putting out a little on the low side of the voltage output specifications which is usually plus or minus 0.25 volts for the 5 volts output....some times this can have a minor effect as a backseat driver so to speak. Try that new battery bank you got. But it could just be your phones' firmware that is limiting the charge to 99% and trying all the chargers in the world probably won't help.