OT: Car USB charger & DAB radio

[Martin Brown]

Can anyone recommend a car USB charger preferably 2A x2 USB sockets that will fit in the cigarette lighter and not protrude too much

[Bill]

In message , Martin Brown writes

I had the same issue with a dash-cam USB supply. I had problems with VHF broadcast and DAB, plus it jammed 145MHz (amateur radio) as well. Looking at it on a spectrum analyser was quite amazing!

I found that one of the very short, 2 output, ones from Maplin made a good replacement, I now run the dash-cam and charge an iPhone from it and haven't had any problems since.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I use a TomTom supply for this. No problems with the car DAB radio.

[Dave Liquorice]

[S Viemeister]

We have this one -

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Dave Liquorice escribió:

It's not that with Lightning-enabled iThings. Lightning cables have an ID chip in them, and if the iThing doesn't see this chip (or thinks it's a knockoff), it flags up an error and refuses to charge.

In earlier iOS releases, the error would just be a warning but the iThing would continue to charge. With successive iOS updates, Apple have progressed to actually disabling functionality.

I had an external battery pack which my iPhone 5 slides into. It's invaluable for providing another charge or two when the battery suddenly runs out, usually at the worst possible moment. It worked in iOS7, but the upgrade to iOS8 stopped it working because the Apple check rejects the Lightning chip. An "iOS8 compatible" replacement was only 10 euro, but I won't be updating that phone to iOS9....

[Ranger]

There are much bigger differences than just that in the teardowns.

And Apple doesn't actually make the car chargers for some reason.

[Tim Watts]

My Dell laptop did something similar when I tried a generic PSU - I was somewhat annoyed.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Tim Watts escribió:

Genuine Dull (sic) PSUs have a 1-wire chip in them, and if the laptop doesn't detect this, it won't charge.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Ranger escribió:

[snip crap]

Another Wodney morph...

[Andy Burns]

Not quite true (my last three laptops have been Dells with the central pin).

I've run the Dell off a HP PSU on occasions, the laptop will treat it as a lower capacity PSU, it will certainly run on it, though it might lower the processor speed and it may only charge very slowly

[Johnny B Good]

Despite still providing power to the laptop from any third party generic mains charger brick with the correct nominal voltage. WTF is that all about? All that does is cause the battery to completely knacker up due to a lack of even a trickle charge.

[Johnny B Good]

It won't charge at all! :-(

[Dave Liquorice]

But we is disscussing USB...

A 1p cost to Apple but with an even bigger mark up and far better tie in.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Dave Liquorice escribió:

To be honest, I've got so sick of crappy third-party Apple cables (both USB and Lightning) not working as expected that I just go to the Apple Store, grit my teeth, bend over and hand over my credit card for the real thing. It pisses me off, but I want stuff that actually works.

For instance, iTunes will not sync with third party cables and my iPhone. I get errors related to USB transfer. Use the gen Apple cable and it all Just Works. Life is too short.

[Huge]

[Lobster]

On 30 Nov 2015, Chris French grunted:

That ebay one looks good - but one thing I'm really unclear about is the likelihood of damaging my iThing by using one of these sorts of cheapo 3rd party thinga. How likely is it to zap my phone? Does the phone include protection, or am I reliant on whatever;s inside the gizmo to do this?

Last time I had to charge my iphone in the car I used a mains inverter and the original iphone mains charger, in the hope that that would be safer?!

[Chris French]

In message , Lobster writes

Well, what I can say is I've charged 2 different android phones, a GPS, two different iphones and probably other random things from two of these and never had a problem.

We've also used various other random car chargers and never had any problems