Whether you are environmentally conscious or just want to save money on extra chargers, your strategy should be to reuse old USB phone chargers as much as possible. It is always useful to have a few extra chargers lying around in a different room or in your bag pack for traveling needs.
Before reusing old USB phone charger on your new phone its important to understand various specifications on it. The specification of a phone charger include input voltage, input current, output voltage and output current.
Input Voltage : This value could vary based on the country the charger was built for. This value could be 120 Volts or 240 Volts. In USA the standard voltage from wall outlet is 120 Volts while in UK its 240 Volts.
Input Current : This is basically the current that the charger would draw from the wall socket. You would need to check what is the max current rating for the socket and compare against charger requirement before putting your charger in. This is generally not a problem no matter which socket you use.
Output Voltage : For a USB based charger this is quite standard. The USB works with 5-5.5 Volts always. This means that you do not really have to worry about using reusing old USB phone charger with another phone which uses USB interface for charging.
Output Current : Current might be the only parameter that you really need to put into consideration to make sure your phone functions properly. All the three aspects discussed above are quite standard and don’t change (unless you change countries as far as inputs are concerned). Output current rating on your charger should generally match with the current rating on your phone. There are two scenarios to be considered here. One where phone requires higher current than what listed on charger and second where its other way round.
When phone’s current rating is higher than charger’s
This could have consequences which include:
- Charger could get adversely affected (burn, heat up etc) if phone draws more current than max current rating on the charger.
- Slow or no phone charging at all.
- Improper functionality on the device if its being powered by the charger while its being charged.
When phone’s current rating is lower than charger’s
In this case normally be no issues as phone only draws current up to max it needs for charging or operation while charging. This would be a safer option than discussed above.
Hopefully now you understand if you can reuse old USB phone charger with your newer phone or device.
