2 USB into 1 mini USB charger cable?

[joeblow789]

Anybody tried charging their phone with one of these dual USB-A to one mini USB-B Y cables? They typically come with external 2.5" drive enclosures to provide enough power for the drive. It could be cool for a fast full 1 amp charge via USB when no better charging option is handy, and certainly better than the majority of crapola mis-labled under-powered chargers out there. I just can't afford to be the guinea pig if such a cable uses proprietary pinouts and will fry the phone.

[wesscoggin]

I just tried this, it hasn't fried the phone yet....
at first I only plugged the "power only side" in and it only charges, then I plugged both in. I'll do more testing tommorow to see if it charges faster or not.

[joeblow789]

Awesome! Eagerly awaiting your test results. BTW, my Y cable is from this Kingwin IDE enclosure:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817121005
Curious if yours is also Kingwin, or for an IDE enclosure.

[joeblow789]

Well, I went ahead & tried it. I loaded nuePowerCPL which showed just under 500 mA, same as a good quality USB cable. Interestingly, a wimpy skinny USB cable delivered only 160 mA. Maybe other PCs will yield better results, but the 2 into 1 cable offers no improvement for me.

[NIKOKAPS]

i use this kind of usb cable daily which came with my portable hard drive though i have not seen significantly faster charge times, it is nice to be able to charge the phone without having to sync on the pc using just the power cable rather then power/data.

[akosidarwin]

woow thats cool i don't even know they have that

[joeblow789]

I stumbled across a product specifically designed to charge from 2 USB ports:
http://www.ppctechs.com/HTC-Touch-Pr...e_1300-440.htm
I doubt it's any different than the portable hard drive cable I tried. I also read that some newer USB implementations can supply more than 500 mA, so those with different/newer motherboards may still benefit from this charging technique. It would be great if others could load nuePowerCPL and report their results.

[riceguy]

its possible the phone has internal circuitry to limit amount of current (500mA) going into the battery to prevent over charging to protect the battery, but hey it may not becuz my htc charger says it can pump 1A at 5Vs.

[joeblow789]

My understanding is the phone is designed to accept 1 amp, as your charger indicates. Unfortunately most aftermarket chargers deliver 500 mA max, regardless of how their labeled. I bet if you load nuePowerCPL, you'd see over 500 mA being delivered if your HTC charger is OEM.

[majickman]

I've done this and yes it charges quicker but the battery also burns out quicker. I ended up replacing the battery far sooner then I should have needed to. It wouldn't hold a charge for more then 4-6 hours