Help External Battery Charger - is there a good one?

[vet3shaws]

Is there a decent external battery charger? I loved the "dummy proof" charger of my Optimus V. It went 1 way, didn't move its contacts, always charged reliably, without possible polarity reversals. Is there such a polarity-sure charger for our Triumph?

Recently, I purchased this ebay battery, pictured below, which came with the blue charger. The blue charger doesn't fit our battery, because it doesn't open wide enough. The ebay seller was sorry and sent me the middle charger. While that was nice gesture, the products both were trouble. The middle charger was worse. It actually ruined my OEM battery. It won't even keep the phone on, let alone charge in my phone.

So now, I'm testing the their battery in their charger. After I fully charged their battery in my phone, I'm charging it in their ext. charger. If it depletes it, its proof that this does not automatically detect polarity. That really electronically is not reliable or sensible.

The sensible thing, is if it doesn't charge it right, I'll flip it the other way and see if that works.

The next move would be to try the other contact combination, since there are 3, not only 2 pins on the battery. By the way, our battery has the + and - marked on different pins than on the ebay battery. I'll upload a picture maybe later, if I get around to it. For now, I'll try to document this.

I can't be the only person frustrated by these chargers. Isn't there a good solution?

 

[marc12868]

Well phone batteries have 3 contacts (positive, negative, and ground), the charger has 2, which means just positive and negative (grounding isn't really needed), If you could find a charger that has one for each that would be best. One thing you can do to make sure of polarity is if you have a multimeter (if not you can get cheap ones from places like harbor freight, well at least here IDK what they have elsewhere), and plug it in to an outlet and put the multimeter on dc, and touch the red prong to one contact and the black on the other contact of the charger. If its a negative reading then you have the polarity reversed, if its a positive reading then the one that the red prong is touching is the positive side and the one the black prong is touching is the negative side.

 

[wigginst]

I have a PowerGen charger I got off of Amazon. It has worked pretty well for me so far charging the stock battery and the additional Anker batteries I purchased. It comes with a USB cable so it plugs into the computer to charge but will also use the power adapter that comes with the phone cords or the adapter like you can use with the iPod etc to plug into a wall.

 

[vet3shaws]

I've been looking for my multi-meter, but can't find it. I'm afraid I sold it at a garage sale or something silly.

Well phone batteries have 3 contacts (positive, negative, and ground), the charger has 2, which means just positive and negative (grounding isn't really needed), If you could find a charger that has one for each that would be best. One thing you can do to make sure of polarity is if you have a multimeter (if not you can get cheap ones from places like harbor freight, well at least here IDK what they have elsewhere), and plug it in to an outlet and put the multimeter on dc, and touch the red prong to one contact and the black on the other contact of the charger. If its a negative reading then you have the polarity reversed, if its a positive reading then the one that the red prong is touching is the positive side and the one the black prong is touching is the negative side.

 

[marc12868]

I've been looking for my multi-meter, but can't find it. I'm afraid I sold it at a garage sale or something silly.

Well another thing you could do is get an led and test the polarity that way. the negative side has a flat part on the plastic you have to look hard. Although you may want to put a resistor attached to the positive leg on the led. You could get a led and resisters at radioshack for a couple bucks. And I'm not quite sure on the value of resistor you should get I would have to look it up, but if you get a 1k ohm resister that should be good. This is if you can't find your multimeter and you just want a cheap alternative to test the polarity.

 

[thangfish]

Well phone batteries have 3 contacts (positive, negative, and ground), the charger has 2, which means just positive and negative (grounding isn't really needed), If you could find a charger that has one for each that would be best. One thing you can do to make sure of polarity is if you have a multimeter (if not you can get cheap ones from places like harbor freight, well at least here IDK what they have elsewhere), and plug it in to an outlet and put the multimeter on dc, and touch the red prong to one contact and the black on the other contact of the charger. If its a negative reading then you have the polarity reversed, if its a positive reading then the one that the red prong is touching is the positive side and the one the black prong is touching is the negative side.

The 3 contacts on a lithium ion phone battery are positive, data and negative. The middle contact is for temperature data from the batteries thermistor (if so equipped). Off brand batteries often don't have the thermistor, so it is sometimes simply another negative terminal.
Smart chargers usually cannot be tested for polarity with a volt meter. They won't output voltage without a battery connected in the proper polarity. That may work with a real cheap "dumb" charger, but lithium ion chargers are not "dumb"... At least from what I know about charging requirements for them.

I have had excellent results with the power gen charger that wiggenst mentioned. It charges like our phone does... Red light up to 90% and purple/pink/whatever, up to 100% , when it turns blue.

 

[witchesrave]

I bought one from OXpwr (highly recommended) I'd suggest the OXpwr Two if you want a big battery capacity. (that one also has 2 ports so you can charge 2 devices at one). I can't post the link but just google them!

I really needed one for my new HTC One X. Absolutely fantastic phone but the battery goes down pretty quick!

Hope that helps!