How do I charge my PinePhone safely?

[thatrandomguy]

Hello,

I just receive my PinePhone CE w/ pmOS on it. I've gone through installation fine and it's all looking good so far, except for one thing:

I am not sure if I can charge the phone with phone chargers I have. I am in the states and I currently use an Xperia XA2 Ultra that I'm planning to flash LOS on.

If it makes you feel better, you can call me a "stupid American" but the fact remains I am not an electrical engineer. I just checked the forum and wiki (grep PinePhone) for mention of what kind of charger I can get for this thing and I either come up to dead links or some external charger....

It's pretty clear there's no way I'll be getting official support for this so I am trying to make sure I don't break something I paid good money for.

Using the red USB cable that came with my phone: where am I able to use this cable to charge my phone? As far as I can tell, the docs says something with 5V is what's supported.

Would this work: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B082TZZJZR/

If not, why? Again, I'm NOT an electrical engineer.

TIA

[Danct12]

Any chargers that can supply 5V and 2A (or 3A) should work fine. I'm currently using a OEM charger from my Redmi Note 7 (model: MDY-09-EW)

[nekojet]

I'm also a "stupid American" looking for a bit of guidance when it comes to safe wall chargers for the PinePhone.

The Quick Start Guide that shipped with the phone says:

The PinePhone should be charged using a 15W (5V 3A) USB -PD power adapter. Charging at a higher voltage may result in damage to the device.

I plan on buying a charger with those exact specs, but in the meantime I rounded up the various (USB-A) wall chargers I've accumulated over time, and here's what I've got:

5V 1A - Apple A1265 (iPhone 6)
5V 1A - (third party)

5.2V 1.35A - ASUS (Nexus 7 I think)
5.2V 2A    - Moto E4
5.2V 2.4A  - Apple A1401 (iPad Air)

I assume the first two are safe (but weak), but I'm not sure about the 5.2V chargers.  Are they unsafe because they are more than 5V?

Besides buying a new charger that specifically (and only) supports 15W (5V 3A), I am also considering one that says:

15 Watts: 5V/3A, 9V/1.6A, 12V/1.2A (Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 compliant with QC2.0 and QC1.0 backwards compatibility.)

Would that be safe for the PinePhone?

Last question.  I assume the USB-C dock just passes whatever power I give it through to the PinePhone, so I should stick to the same safe chargers that I would plug directly into to PinePhone.  Is that correct?

Thank you thank you in advance for any help/guidance/recommendations.  Cheers!

[SwordfishII]

Reasonable question.

The answer is actually fairly simple, the important part is 5v as voltage needs hardware to be changed (step down/up converters). So charger provides 5v, phone needs 5v all is good for device safety. Amps can be thought of as the flow rate and is controlled by the phone and charger in concert. Rest assured as long as the voltage is 5v the phone will be fine.

If any of you have a fast charging device you can see it in action. When you first plug it in It says charging, after a bit it says fast charging because a higher amperage is negotiated.

Here are a few examples:

- 5v3a charger > device that needs 5v1a is fine the charger will only provide 5v1a
- 5v1a charger > device that wants 5v3a is still fine, the device will only charge at 5v1a (slower than it could charge)

USB is standard at 5v so no issues should be present with any plug.

Not sure if the pinephone has something like pumpexpress (fast charging), if so you want your wallwart to provide those amps to take advantage of the fast charging, but again no safety issues if it doesn't.

Someone asked about a multivoltage charger. It will be safe since it can provide 5v, HOWEVER the one mentioned is QC which is proprietary and not compatible with PD standards so it won't provide a fast charge.

[guenther]

I deleted my post because I am no longer sure whether the information was correct

[bitnick]

No need to feel stupid for asking about USB charging - it's a jungle of different standards! Wikipedia has some good information for the curious mind. As long as a USB charger is used though (any kind) I don't think it's possible to destroy anything - but it might be very slow to charge!

If I understand the AXP803 datasheet correctly, the Pinephone supports the USB Battery Charging (BC) 1.2 specification. I wonder how this would work with a USB Power Delivery (PD) 2.0/3.0 charger? Are those chargers smart enough to emulate the older BC standard with devices (like the Pinephone?) that doesn't support USB PD?

On Mobian (and maybe other distros?) there is a "Powersupply" app which displays detailed USB and battery info. At the moment all I have is an old 1 A USB charger (which probably doesn't even support USB BC), and with this the app shows that the phone limits charging to the old USB standard's 0.5 A (i.e. 2.5 W). It's SLOW: the phone draws >2 W (or 0.4 A) when idle with the screen on, so there's almost no power left for charging the battery.

I have an 18 W PD3.0 USB-C charger on order. It will be interesting to see what the Pinephone does when hooked up to that charger.

[nekojet]

This has been very helpful, and I think I'm starting to get it.

I'm going to stick with 5V, avoid 5.2V, buy the 15W (5V 3A) charger, not buy the multivolt charger I mentioned, and continue to read up on this stuff.  Cool.

Thanks for your help!

[guenther]

This has been very helpful, and I think I'm starting to get it.

I'm going to stick with 5V, avoid 5.2V, buy the 15W (5V 3A) charger, not buy the multivolt charger I mentioned, and continue to read up on this stuff.  Cool.

Thanks for your help!

I would use the Moto E4 or Apple A1401 charger you mentioned. I'm totally sure, the 5,2V Output will not damage anything. They are designed for that use. No charger provides exactly 5V and the Voltage will decrease under load anyway. But it's your decision.

Edit:

Supplied voltage by a host or a powered hub ports is between 4.75 V and 5.25 V.

http://www.hardwarebook.info/Universal_Serial_Bus_(USB)

[nekojet]

Thanks, everyone.  I checked the USB-A ports on my Anker power strip (PowerPort Cube A2763) and it says:

USB Output: 5V  3.6A (2.4A Max Per Port)

so I'm going to use that until I buy a specific charger.

Thanks again!

[SwordfishII]

Yep. Should work fine.

My pinephone shipped to my mailing address in the US. Once it gets to me I will test both QC and PD chargers as I have both on hand, to see if the pinephone provides fast charging to either.

I would guess PD would while QC won't.