charging mp3 player with lin-ion battery

Hi.

My new mp3 player

It has a built in 1000mah battery and it came with a 1000mah charger.

But i also have a 500mah charger, which is best to charge the lin-ion.

Will i get better battery life if i charge at 500mah opposed to 1000mah.

thanks

John.

Keep in mind that the player will most likely charge at its own rate regardless of what adapter you use.

TinderBox (UK) said:

Hi.

My new mp3 player

It has a built in 1000mah battery and it came with a 1000mah charger.

But i also have a 500mah charger, which is best to charge the lin-ion.

Will i get better battery life if i charge at 500mah opposed to 1000mah.

thanks

John.

Click to expand...

There are 1000 mAh batteries, meaning they have a capacity of outputting 1000 mA at 1 Volt, for one hour, or the equivalent.
There is nothing called a 1000 mAh charger!
There are chargers with a set Voltage and a maximum power output of 1000 mA.
So you forgot to tell us what Voltage this charger was rated at!
The charger that came with your MP3 player, is built for your player, with the neccessary Voltage output and pin configuration.
The power/Ampere output is costantly regulated by the charging circuit inside your player, and what it can draw and feed to the batteries inside.
Please do not try another charger with your MP3 player if you do not know about these simple things!
The end result might be a ruined player, if the charger does not fit the needs of your player!
When you have read and learned some about electrics, electronics, Ohms law, everything you need to know about playing with with batteries , chargers, flashlights.
Then you can start changing and experimenting with charging batteries, also for MP3 players.
And yes, charging batteries with low power/Amperes is usually better than doing quick charging with higher Amperes fed into the cells.
The trick to get most "juice" stored inside the energy carriers, the "cells", is to feed energy into them avoiding heat build-up in the cells during this process!
Start studying, this is what you learn in Physics at school? Yes?
Learn some about your toys and the principles of running them.
And keep your player working for a long time!
Hope this saved your player?

Hi.

I think your reply is a little over the top

Both chargers are 5volt and both have the same usb connector.

Regards

John.

If the player charges through USB there's no way it's drawing more than 500mA. This is because USB ports in computers are rated at a maximum of 500mA, so no device that runs solely on a USB port (as opposed to devices that connect through USB but also have a socket for a DC adapter) can draw more than 500mA by design. This means that the player will charge at the same rate from either adapter.

My advice is to use the 1Ah adapter, because whatever the player draws (likely rather less than 500mA) the beefier adapter will be less loaded, and thus probably more efficient. Then again, DC adapters all sip electricity, so in practical terms it probably won't do any practical difference at all.

Hi.

I looked into the usb specifications a few months ago and some usb ports on computers can supply up to 1000mah, maybe 500mah is a minimum?

I will use the 1000mah charger, it`s just a bit heavier to lug around as it is a transformer not switchmode version.

Regards

John.

Knowing a little bit about the facts always helps?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB

Further down on the page, this is valid info for this thread:

"Power

The USB specification provides a 5 V supply on a single wire from which connected USB devices may draw power. The specification provides for no more than 5.25 V and no less than 4.75 V (5 V±5%) between the positive and negative bus power lines.[11] Initially, a device is only allowed to draw 100 mA. It may request more current from the upstream device in units of 2 mA up to a maximum of 500 mA.
If a bus-powered hub is used, the devices downstream may only use a total of four units — 400 mA — of current. This limits compliant bus-powered hubs to 4 ports. The host operating system typically keeps track of the power requirements of the USB network and may warn the computer's operator when a given segment requires more power than is available.
On-The-Go and Battery Charging Specification both add new powering modes to the USB specification. The latter specification allows USB devices to draw up to 1.5 A from hubs and hosts that follow the Battery Charging Specification."


Also there are some exeptions:


"Non-standard devices

A number of USB devices require more power than is permitted by the specifications for a single port. This is a common requirement of external hard and optical disc drives and other devices with motors or lamps. Such devices can be used with an external power supply of adequate rating, which is allowed by the standard, or by means of a dual input USB cable, one input of which is used for power and data transfer, the other solely for power, which makes the device a non-standard USB device. Some external hubs may, in practice, supply more power to USB devices than required by the specification but a standard compliant device must not depend on this."

I don't think charging at 0.5C instead of 1C will have any significance on battery life. What matters more is probably what voltage the charge terminates at and the depth of discharge.

My daughter uses our PC with the old 1.1 USB to charge her 8GB RCA Mp3. I encouraged her to charge it before it warns of low battery and it usually recharges within an hour. Was my advice correct and once full, does the player, itself, limit overcharge? Thanks.