Cigarette lighter and phone charger
Discussion
Please could I have some advice about getting an in-car phone charger working. I've been using it in a different car for a while now with no problems. Now I try it in my Honda F-RV and it's not working.
I have two in-car phone chargers, a rubbish one and a better one.
The rubbish one I paid not much more than £1 for on Amazon, so can't expect much from it. The USB connector is dodgy and this has never worked properly.
The good one is an Anker PowerDrive 2 and has worked great in my previous car but doesn't seem to work in the cigarette socket of this car.
When I plug in the rubbish phone charger into the cigarette lighter socket, the red light does come on, so I take that as reasonable proof that the cigarette lighter socket is working.
But when I put the Anker PowerDrive charger into the cigarette lighter socket, nothing. The light doesn't come on and needless to say the phone doesn't charge. I've tried putting the PowerDrive 2 into the other car again since and it worked fine. I then tried putting it in the accessory power socket in the boot of this car and surprisingly, it did work there.
Any advice please? Ideally if there's a simple, safe and effective tweak that I could do to the Anker charger to get it to work in the front 12V/cigarette lighter socket I'd prefer that. I suspect it might be to do with the length of the metal pin that protrudes into the socket, but that's a bit of a guess. Otherwise any other in-car USB charger I could buy that is known to work in that socket?
Thanks in advance
I have two in-car phone chargers, a rubbish one and a better one.
The rubbish one I paid not much more than £1 for on Amazon, so can't expect much from it. The USB connector is dodgy and this has never worked properly.
The good one is an Anker PowerDrive 2 and has worked great in my previous car but doesn't seem to work in the cigarette socket of this car.
When I plug in the rubbish phone charger into the cigarette lighter socket, the red light does come on, so I take that as reasonable proof that the cigarette lighter socket is working.
But when I put the Anker PowerDrive charger into the cigarette lighter socket, nothing. The light doesn't come on and needless to say the phone doesn't charge. I've tried putting the PowerDrive 2 into the other car again since and it worked fine. I then tried putting it in the accessory power socket in the boot of this car and surprisingly, it did work there.
Any advice please? Ideally if there's a simple, safe and effective tweak that I could do to the Anker charger to get it to work in the front 12V/cigarette lighter socket I'd prefer that. I suspect it might be to do with the length of the metal pin that protrudes into the socket, but that's a bit of a guess. Otherwise any other in-car USB charger I could buy that is known to work in that socket?
Thanks in advance
felixgogo said:
As it works in the boot plug, perhaps the plug inside the car is only live with the ignition on?
FelixGogo, thanks for your reply.Both plugs are only live when the ignition is on. Since I posted the message I have been in touch with the manufacturers of the USB car charger and they have confirmed that it is not compatible with my car.
If it would have been within its 18 month warranty I think they (Anker) might have exchanged it or sent me a replacement free of charge, but since it was out of warranty they recommended I buy the Anker Powerdrive 2 Elite car charger which is compatible.
In the end I bought the Alictron Fast USB Car Charger and so far, so good.
How can a cigarette lighter charger not be compatible with a phone?
Perplexed but feel the pain. The charger in my car charges really slowly so that if I'm not using satnav then the battery will have a few more percent at the end of a journey but if using satnave I will use up a lot of battery by the time I reach where I'm going. If I use the satnav without plugging it in then the phone loses charge even faster.
In my wife's car and using her charger the phone charges up and increases the percentage power left even when running satnav.
Why? And how are you supposed to know which chargers are compatible with your ciggy socket and which ones are not only "compatible" ie they charge when the phone is resting, but keep charging your phone higher even when using satnav?
Perplexed but feel the pain. The charger in my car charges really slowly so that if I'm not using satnav then the battery will have a few more percent at the end of a journey but if using satnave I will use up a lot of battery by the time I reach where I'm going. If I use the satnav without plugging it in then the phone loses charge even faster.
In my wife's car and using her charger the phone charges up and increases the percentage power left even when running satnav.
Why? And how are you supposed to know which chargers are compatible with your ciggy socket and which ones are not only "compatible" ie they charge when the phone is resting, but keep charging your phone higher even when using satnav?
To clarify -- the charger is compatible with the phone (or any phone - it just offers a USB socket into which you can plug in any device) but it doesn't fit correctly into the cigarette lighter socket in my car so doesn't work.
I think it's to do with the shape of the plug-end of the charger not being the quite the right size/shape to fit the socket correctly.
As far as some chargers being barely able to maintain a phones charge and others charging faster - most chargers have a power rating in A[mps] or W[atts] which tells you how much charging power they can provide.
Chargers with a lower power rating will charge more slowly. On the other hand there's also an upper limit to how fast a phone can charge, there's no point getting a 10A USB charger (if such a thing even exists) for a phone that will only use at most 2A.
I think it's to do with the shape of the plug-end of the charger not being the quite the right size/shape to fit the socket correctly.
As far as some chargers being barely able to maintain a phones charge and others charging faster - most chargers have a power rating in A[mps] or W[atts] which tells you how much charging power they can provide.
Chargers with a lower power rating will charge more slowly. On the other hand there's also an upper limit to how fast a phone can charge, there's no point getting a 10A USB charger (if such a thing even exists) for a phone that will only use at most 2A.
Yes it's normal that GPS/sat-nav signal requires a lot of power, so a lower powered charger might not be able to keep the phone charged whilst using satnav. (But I'd expect that a higher powered charger would be able to charge the battery at the same time as using satnav, the phone might get warm/hot whilst doing this)
Chromegrill said:
Perplexed but feel the pain. The charger in my car charges really slowly so that if I'm not using satnav then the battery will have a few more percent at the end of a journey but if using satnave I will use up a lot of battery by the time I reach where I'm going. If I use the satnav without plugging it in then the phone loses charge even faster.
Try a higher power charger, one with 2 x 2.4A (or 4.8A total) output.https://www.amazon.co.uk/Charger-RAVPower-Compact-...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Charger-RAVPower-Adapter-...
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