Thursday, February 4, 2016

When charging ports go bad(throwback thursday)

As you all know last year I got the Galaxy Note one, a phone I love dearly(of course a few months after I got it the Galaxy note II dropped but that Motorola backflip was killing me), for work. The phone works great, everything I need to do for work I can do(granted when the Galaxy Note 3 comes out you will see a new hotness post) and have even shown my boss the beauty of doing more on the cloud using the phone(since he has one too). As an admission of jealousy Eikichi recently left the cult of Blackberry for a Galaxy Note 2 and he loves it so getting the three is a SLIGHT imperative since he can not have the faster phone. This is not to say that everything is hunky dory, most likely because of how I yank the thing off the charger, as well as beat up the cords the charging port is not working so well. I can get it to work but it requires a bit of ingenuity
That my friends is 19 cents if I place it just so the charging port works again and I can charge my phone using a cable. Now I know some are saying: Why don't you just get the charging port fixed? Because that can be expensive and if they send me a refurbished phone instead welp me and refurbished phones do not get along well. The phone works perfectly save the problem with charging so if I just had a way to get a freshly charged battery in there I would be golden right, right. Enter a few external battery chargers.

Let's back up for a second, I didn't just guess it was the charging port, I mean I have had batteries go bad on me before and I also checked the usb cable. As I constantly hop in and out of cars and they sometimes get wrapped around my leg and then shut into the door it could have been a bad cable. I first hooked my phone up to a "if you touch the cable I will end your life" that stays in my room, I'm serious this cable doesn't exist to anyone but me. My GS3 charges with the cable, the note does not(well doesn't with the 19 cents pictured above). Okay so that ruled out the cable, maybe it isn't the cable but the battery. My younger brother also has a note we swap batteries, my original batter works just fine in his phone charges and everything. His battery does not charge in mine. So yeah it's the charging port. Okay so now that it's diagnosed what do I do? I looked on the web for some options first and foremost I do not want to crack open my phone and do ANY soldering, I have Frankenstein cravings from time to time but not with stuff that I don't feel like dropping full price on to replace. I notice that on Amazon there are various companies selling spare batteries and external battery chargers. There were two that caught my eye, they appeared very similar with one boasting the ability to charge many different batteries of many different types.

 This model by Hyperion features sliding pins that can accommodate different pin locations(though since the spacer is to the side you have to offset the battery slightly, minor design flaw). Granted if you see the note battery you might think hmm that's a little small but the bottom stretches down and can flip over(pictured below). This version came with two batteries and the charger, which of course was awesome I could carry one extra battery with me have one on the charger waiting for when I get home. And it did work for a while I only had one complaint it pretty much took all day or night to charge a battery, yes I had 3 batteries(the stock my phone came with and the two I got in the pack) but if it was going to take all day or night to charge a spare unless I gave up my phone for two days I was only ever going to have one battery .

So I dealt with it for a while but then I looked back at the other charger that was ONLY for the note one battery one of the other main reasons I did not buy it was because at the time it only came with one battery. So I ordered another Hyperion, gave one of the spare batteries to my dad and now I put two on the charger and kept two with me. So now I had 4 batteries and the means to keep two charging at all times, then I saw a deal on Amazon for the other type of charger the sole charger and it now had two batteries with it. I thought about it for a while and decided what the heck if nothing else I could split the batteries with my father again and have 5 batteries and continue to use the hyperions if it was too good to be true.

The Multi-connector Usb Battery charger(yes I know bland name no pizzazz), looks just as bland as it's nameit has two little posts at the top and that white bar at the bottom(both chargers glow reddish pink until fully charged and then glow a soft indigo/blue). The negative is it only charges galaxy note one batteries, the positive It charges those batteries to 100% in about 3-5 hours. There is another negative the arms/plugs/swiveling contacts on the back can get a little out of whack if you plug it and unplug it too often. Since I was taking mine with me in the car to travel it was getting quite a bit of mileage. And my genius self TRIED to be all gentle and bend the tines back in, SNAP one broke. Now this is not the safest thing I have ever done but it still works if you apply the broken arm back in and hurriedly plug it into the wall(which I have done). Of course this defeats the purpose of having a charger with me just in case I run my batteries down watching cameras, talking, or playing certain battery hogging video games(hey I'm man enough to admit I am not always using my work phone for productive purposes, I'm human bite me. And no it isn't Candy crush or Angry Birds, I do play candy crush just on my personal phone the GS3. Plus there is the "Overnight Battery" basically since I want my phone to be on in the morning I have to sacrifice a batter of various charge for the time I am asleep.

Depending on how charged it was, how many notifications I got overnight, and whether or not I get any phone calls early or late it could be discharged to a state of between 50-85%( I had it at 90% once but I had changed that battery out at like 2 am). So I ordered another one and once again gave away a spare battery(hey I could use some good karma here and there).

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Anyway this was two years ago, and about to be two phones ago. As the new hotness post was already done but hey I thought this would be fun to dig through some of the old posts I never finished and set them out as is. If you like it let me know, if any of these help ya out or make you say, well dang I wish you would have gone ahead and finished this, maybe I will finish that one

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