Hi !
I noticed something new last Tuesday. When I connect my L5 on someone else’s charging station, which so far has been able to hold the battery level at best but never increase it, but now it is fully charged! I have no idea which update caused this but THANK YOU !! This makes life with the L5 much more flexible.
Has anyone else noticed the behavior as well?
You provide too little info in order to understand your comment. What do you call a “charging station”?
If you mean chargers from other cell phones - well I have done this right from the beginning without any issue.
The thing is that the cell phone chargers got more and more powerful with the time.
I can show you a 3 different Samsung smartphone chargers 5V 1A, 5V 2A and 5V 3A.
So when you take the latest model it delivers similar to the original Librem 5 charger. If you take an older model, it will deliver less power and might not be able to charge enough.
I can not tell you which phone charger they are. Mostly any charger that came with their smartphones. However, the power consumption of the L5 was so high that these charger could not fully charge the L5 when it was switched on.
Certainly they were power supplies with a typical output between 1-2A at 5V. However, now it is possible to charge my L5 with a smaller charger.
It is absolutely normal that older weaker chargers can’t provide the necessary power supply. But the new ones can.
It is just how the evolution of specs goes. That is why I noticed that I have Samsung chargers from 3 different generations and each following generation gets more powerful while sometimes keeping the exact same look!
If you want to know if a charger is powerful enough, you need to read the small text on the chargers.
You misunderstand my point. I can charge the L5 with weaker power supplies, which was not possible before.
Ah ok, that is what I meant that the info in the first post was insufficient.
Could you provide more info - maybe a photo of the text on the charger you used?
Correct, as @dos kindly explained to us:
As well, slides 23 and 26, at least, should further answer/explain @execrable question here:
Yep, since this MR we are now able to draw higher currents from chargers that support BC1.2, which previously were being limited to only 500mA.
I’m still not familiar with this tempting product, known as WONDOM PS-BC12211 but still sharing here as related: “The 2-port USB charger on battery extension board supports USB charging specification, revision 1.2 (BC 1.2) which could automatically config D+ and D- lines connections for an attached device. The battery extension board automatically adjusts its output level based on the connected device. It is compatible with smartphones and tablets from Apple, Samsung and Google. The extension board can charge up to two devices at the same time, which can get more output than ordinary dual-port chargers. A maximum output of 5.25V/2.1 A brings you to a whole new level of high-speed charging.”
WONDOM distributors are well known but this one provides few more pictures of the above presented product, by adding: “USB- Erweiterung für das Wondom BCPB4 5- Zellen Akku- Board. Ermöglicht das High-Speed Laden von mobilen Endgeräten per USB Anschluss und das Laden des Akkus per Rundstecker”.
EDIT/NOTE: By eventually using above linked product or any other USB3.1 or USB3.2 dedicated charging and charging downstream ports, for charging only of the Librem 5, I would recommend (just my non-expert opinion, if not mandatory while might be easily related to the additional heat produced, while still not used/tested in real environment from my side, not up to now) to have USB-A to USB-C cable with integrated 56kΩ pull-up resistor or rather adequate adapter with the originally delivered USB-C to USB-C cable on board:
Actually this would be the very fair information (and quite useful, as Librem 5 charging protocol specs related): “If the BC1.2 is connected to mains voltage and is separate from a PC, the maximum charging current is 2.4A.”
Cool, thanks for the feedback …
Sometimes it’s good to know that you’re not imagining something 