Mini USB charger for Motorola W156 - standard or proprietary??

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edge

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#101458 2-May-2012 11:33

Looking for technical assistance! Friend has an old Motorola W156 (c2007 ish?) and wants a charger for it. I have one at home from my old Okta Touch. Both are physically mini-USB chargers and both charging specs seems to suit around 5V 900mA output. So the question is - are they electronically compatible?

I had a sneaking feeling that where charging was concerned some earlier phones from different manufactruers might apply different voltages to different pins in the USB arrangement. Is this true? Any help appreciated - don't want to blow her phone up unnecessarily :-)

"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of what he was never reasoned into."
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cyril7

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#618282 2-May-2012 11:56

Hi Tony, all USB chargers simply provide 5V at some current limit, the variance of which may alter charge times etc but not much else.

What did used to happen before the manufacturers settled on a global phone charging USB based system is have varying sense resistor values that are used to tell the charger to start delivery of current, hence some older phone/charger combinations wont work together, all more recent devices that comply with the standard dont suffer this inconvenience.

So you cannot do damage to try other chargers, but take the risk of the phone not triggering current delivery in which case it would fail to charge or do anything useful.

Cyril

Edit, I should note we did have a Motorola Razar from that erra, and yes it had this problem, I note newer Motorolas have come into line with the standard, as one would expect.

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#618314 2-May-2012 12:52

Thanks S. I'll give it a bash tomorrow. Its for the same person you did the FV install for a while back - I seem to be her fallback technology advisor (who, in turn, needs the occasional bit of expert assistance)!!

"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of what he was never reasoned into."
— most commonly attributed to Jonathan Swift, author/theologian