The Stovebolt Site Forums The Back Office IT Short Bus What would cause a cell phone to take a long time to charge?

It is a new Samsung Galaxy 4 and the owner says it takes overnight. She is not too savvy I know because she depends on me for a lot. I googled and the answer it gave was 2 hrs or a bad charger.

Hey Ron, I would suspect the charger. If its new, she should take it back to where she purchased it and have them check it out.

Chargers come in a lot of charge rates. If it is a low-rate charger it will take forever. If the cbarger she has is old, it might be slow by design.

Another possibility is the charge cable. If it is a very long or very cheap cable, it will not charge at full speed because of the added resistance in the cable.

The last thing to check (that bit me the last time I bought a phone) is if Smart Charging is turned on in the phone. It is a fairly new feature where it intentionally charges extremely slowly and only to ~80% until it *thinks* you are about to unplug it so that the battery doesn't sit at max charge for a long time.

On my current phone, that meant I could plug it in at 3PM and it would gain 5% charge before bedtime. If I got up at my normal 5:30, it would be consistently at 80%-82%. If I got up at 8:00 (when it apparently thought I should), it would be fully charged.

Turning the smart charge off now makes it charge at full rate whenever I plug it in and lets me manage the battery myself.

Excellent response Fibonacho

She had bought a cheap one from where she worked. She replaced the charger the charger from the one she had stolen and now all is fine. For my phone, I bought one from Amazon called Statik. They have one at 6ft and a 3ft cord but it has a magnetic end that connects to a magnetic connecter that goes in your phone. Fast charging. The only disadvantage you can not use one of the cords that are everywhere. You can remove the connector and still plug in the charger of the old style.Statik, Here.. BTW I have been using mine for about 6 months.

That statik cord is pretty cool. Not sure I would want one, but it is neat anyway.

It takes some planning when you travel. When my mishap on my trip to KC I left the cord in my truck and we took Jordans. But you can take the pin out of the phone and use someone else's. Thanks JDL.