The last post by Canuck got me thinking about the various ways of charging. So I did the following to see whether a) charging from a PC does indeed lower battery life and b) which one charges faster.....
I used the following DEVICES
- Blackberry
- iPOD
- iPAD
and the following cables
- wall adapter (with a USB port on it)
- USB cable
- CSQUID cable (which i got as a gift in asia but has since started selling on amazon as one of the other posters had mentioned)
Here are the conclusions
BATTERY LIFE
1) I found that there is no difference in battery life for all 3 cables if the PC was allowed to stay on for a few hours.
2) If the PC was set to go into standby in say 1 hour, the regular USB cable had the lowest battery life(since it stops charging), the CSQUID cable and wall adapter charged to the full level and allowed the battery life to be a few hours longer
3) The iPAD could not charge from any of my non-Apple PCs but the CSQUID and wall adapter could.
CHARGING TIME
1) For the blackberry and ipod, I found that the regular USB cable charged at a slower rate than both the wall adapter and the CSQUID cable.
2) iPad charged in the same time using the CSQUID or wall adapter (regular USB cable could not charge from my non-apple machines)
CONCLUSIONS
- For longer battery life make sure that your power is on and allows the phone to charge the entire time. So either use a wall adapter or a cable that can support charge even if the PC is in standby
- Charging time does vary depending on the mode you use. Typically a wall adapter will be faster or you have to buy a specialized cable that accommodates faster charge.
In the end if battery life and charging time does not matter, throw away your wall adapter and charge from the PC the whole time!!
Sorry for being long winded - i found this type of information eye-opening but then I don't have a life!