topic Re: Longer charging USB cable in XPERIA archive

Longer charging USB cable

cable — Sun, 20 Oct 2013 19:06:32 GMT

Hello. The USB charging cable I got with my Sony Xperia Z1 is b ridiculously short and I want to buy a longer one but I wanna make sure it'll be sufficient?
I have a mini USB charging cable I bought online, which is long, but its power doesn't seem to be sufficient (phone battery drains while charging)...
Does anyone have a link to a cable that they know works?
Thanks.

Re: Longer charging USB cable

GCS88 — Sun, 20 Oct 2013 19:36:44 GMT

@cable wrote:
Hello. The USB charging cable I got with my Sony Xperia Z1 is b ridiculously short and I want to buy a longer one but I wanna make sure it'll be sufficient?
I have a mini USB charging cable I bought online, which is long, but its power doesn't seem to be sufficient (phone battery drains while charging)...
Does anyone have a link to a cable that they know works?
Thanks.

I had the same issue before and its not the cable youre having problems with its the power output of whatever youre using to charge youre battery I used to charge my Z1 with a 3meter cable through my laptop usb and to my surprise it takes around 9-11 hours for it charge fully from 14% due to the usb only pumping out 0.5A....

now the solution is getting a good charger I seem to notice it prefers my nokia charger which has a 2A output power and that sorted me out now im using a 3A charger and Im happy with the results

Re: Longer charging USB cable

cable — Sun, 20 Oct 2013 20:18:38 GMT

Are you sure? Using the same charging adapter and the original, short charging cable the phone charges very quick regardless.

Re: Longer charging USB cable

GCS88 — Sun, 20 Oct 2013 22:51:09 GMT

@cable wrote:
Are you sure? Using the same charging adapter and the original, short charging cable the phone charges very quick regardless.

Yes im quite sure otherwise I wouldnt share the info to You, just imagine watering a garden with a hose but with a very fast evaporating water, Youre Z1 charges ok with the short cable because the current travels through is a very short route and then into the phone regardless of the amps but when Youre using a longer cable the Amps that Your charging source is just not enought that 60% of the current charge is already gone before the current even reaches halfway the cable, what should You do? turn the faucet up! higher amps means more and faster current! and even with long usb cables, now Im using a 3 meter usb cable with my new portapow 3.5A charger and it works like a charm especially when you only need 4 hours to charger to 100% from 10% now take my advice and tell me the how it goes.

Re: Longer charging USB cable

Archanos — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 00:16:23 GMT

This is what happens

Standard USB wire can be at most 2 meters long. This is the absolute maximum for this standard. Longer ones won't work in most cases. Not only for charging, but for any data operations.

Sony provides shorter cables because any longer will cause electromagnetic inductions within the wire (kind of electrical noise). The only way to minimize this is to put ferrite cores on both sides of the cable. You might seen them before, they are bold rings over the wire very close to the plugs. This helps a lot only if the whole cable is not longer than 2 meters.

USB cable with those cores are more expensive than those cheap Chinese. But even if they are longer than 2 meters there is no guarantee they'll work with every devices, especially with those sensitive. Keep in mind that this is suppose to be data cable and it shares both charging and data functions. So they are built to handle the charging in more "electronic" way.

This is not that weaker charger can't provide enough juice, at this level of current and voltage it doesn't matter if the cable has 0.5 or 10 meters, but this "noise" can make a big difference. You can check this by connecting the phone to the dock with this long one (if you can), or use some long extension cord. It will charge like a charm even with long one, because this socket in the phone is not designed to handle data, it "doesn't care". But still in the time of connecting the phone to the charger with such a long cable can make this induction thing and if the cable doesn't have ferrite cores installed - this most likely will be fatal for the phone.

The other thing that might be a problem is that the cable itself is designed for data connections and have shorted pins inside one of the plugs. As a result of this it (theoretically) may be causing some extra electric load and with a length of it this could make problems.

Long USB cables always mean trouble. Especially with sensitive devices. Long ones, on the other hand, are very expensive, not worth using them only for the charging process.

Of course you can risk highly power efficient charger (like 3A or more) to force some current stabilization but in the moment the induction problem comes to play, the "stronger" charger is, the louder "fireworks" will be.

Re: Longer charging USB cable

gz023247 — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 10:05:35 GMT

I'm glad this was put up as a post as I thought I was going mad my end. As pointed out the cable that came with my Z1 was far to short from my charging point to where I sit the phone on a night.

So I bought a lead measuring 2 meteres long only to find it charged the phone only to 60% over night

Reverting back to the orginal cable supplied by Sony charges the phone fine again, but then the short length causes an issue.

I think I will look at getting a 1.5 metre cable and see how I get on with that instead.

Re: Longer charging USB cable

GCS88 — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 13:46:34 GMT

@Archanos wrote:
Of course you can risk highly power efficient charger (like 3A or more) to force some current stabilization but in the moment the induction problem comes to play, the "stronger" charger is, the louder "fireworks" will be.

Well devices like these will only take what it can so im not really afraid of the charger burning it but youre input about the usb is really helpful thanks for the info

Re: Longer charging USB cable

cable — Tue, 22 Oct 2013 19:32:35 GMT

Oh dear, so the problem is more annoying than I thought! What about this magnetic charging, using the dock thingy to the left? Just below normal mini USB input? Is it any faster?

Re: Longer charging USB cable

Archanos — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 02:14:33 GMT

@cable wrote:
Oh dear, so the problem is more annoying than I thought! What about this magnetic charging, using the dock thingy to the left? Just below normal mini USB input? Is it any faster?

This is not a problem really, tis is an advantage.

Think about it this way:

Sony made their best to fit so capacitive battery in such a small case. But no computer can provide more than 500mA from the USB 2.0 port. This means you would have to wait "ages" to recharge the 3000mAh battery, it's a huge one.

So Sony makes it easier with the wall charger, that can actually provide more than triple that hight power. So the phone recharges relatively fast when compared to most "standard" wall chargers.

But, as usual, Sony goes a step further. They provided a fast charging port that have no limitations of the standard USB. The magnetic port. With the dock (30/31) you can connect the phone to this port and recharge your phone very fast. To simplify the subject, they ended the other side of the dock with a standard USB plug (instead of custom ones like sometimes before), so you don't need to buy any custom wall chargers - you might have your old ones from, let's say, iPhone, iPad (those are really strong).

No computer can handle this socket, because PC ports are way too weak, always were.

So yes, charging via the dock connected to the provided 1850mA charger by Sony with your Z1 is relatively SUPER FAST. This is not really a problem, this is the advantage you won't get anywhere else.

The real problem is that almost nobody read the freaking manual that loudly says the dock won't work with the weak PC/MAC USB port. Sony try to make our life easier, but some people seems to be too ignorant to see this. (no offense)

Re: Longer charging USB cable

Beginner111 — Sun, 29 Dec 2013 14:53:15 GMT

Although getting a higher output power supply sounds feasible, I worry about its effect has on the longevity of the battery... and the safety issue... as I am not a electronic engineer and have no knowledge whatsoever on electronic circuitry. There have been lots of news on blown-up battery and many of them are Japanese made. I am a little bit worried using something not sony recommended.

So does anyone have a solution? the 1.5 M cable works? I used a 6ft usb 2.0 cable to connect the sony usb power plug and the sony charging base, and it doesn't work for charging.

Hope someone can provide a working solution...

Anything from Sony?

Can anyone from Sony speak more on this? Obviously, there is a physical requirement for a longer charging cable for those who spoke here including myself. If no usb cable solution for the moment, I may just use a power extension cord to sit on my desk which is quite lame....

Re: Longer charging USB cable

Sam — Mon, 30 Dec 2013 00:22:59 GMT

Unfortunately there is no solution I can offer at this stage as we do not have a longer cable available to meet this requirement. I would also like to ask people to please bear in mind the information provided by Beginner111 regarding potential harm to your product by using third party chargers.

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Re: Longer charging USB cable

mi386 — Sun, 01 Jun 2014 07:54:48 GMT

Same way as long garden watering hose has friction long electrical cable has electron friction, so solution is to have thicker cable (diameter marked as millimeter square meters) by this cable can be longer even using genuine good quality (made by Salcomp) Sony charger. I have 3 meters long cable with genuine 1500 milliampere charger and it is working (charges even using phone at the same time) very well.

Imagine you set light pulp (with thin wire inside) middle of the charge cable so all the energy is used by the pulp but nothing goes to battery.

Re: Longer charging USB cable

mi386 — Sun, 01 Jun 2014 08:15:40 GMT

Cable diameter comparison table i.e. here: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/awg-wire-gauge-d_731.html