An alternate Kindle Charger
It happened again. I was reading at lunch and realized I had not charged my kindle in quite a while. It died. ARRRGH. So I am at work, no where near the standard charger. The plug on this is not run of the mill, but I have a drawer full of old cell phone chargers.
Before beginning to use the charger I will describe later I decided to attempt to do a trickle charge with my USB cable. We’ll if your Kindle is so dead that it won’t alert your machine it is connected then your machine like mine will likely not charge the USB port to even trickle charge the unit. So I began a search for alternatives. It began with confirming that a Kindle will indeed trickle charge at all.
On page 16 of the PDF users guide it says”USB port — plug in the included USB cable to transfer content between your computer and your Kindle. Your Kindle will also accept a small trickle charge over USB that may extend your battery life if your computer’s USB port or powered USB hub provides power.” The words that matter are “small” “trickle” and most importantly “may”. In my case it was too far gone to “may”…
I searched all over the web and could find no specs on what the specifications were for the shipping charger. I found one reference for 5.0V ~ 2A in a forum but had hoped for something concrete. So I called Kindle support, she wasn’t able to find it in her system anywhere either, but did tell me the use of any charger other than Amazons would void the warranty. After pressing her on the fact they offer and alternative from iGo on their site she relented ad said that only products sold thought the Kindle store would not void the warranty. Huh…
Oh well she was kind enough to wander over to where ever “there” is and confirm that the stock or replacement Kindle AC adapter delivers a 5.0V~2A to the unit. ( I later confirmed this under the gray panel on the back…) So therefore unless some unique effort was placed to mess with the consumer a 5.0V ~ 1A charger should work without damaging the unit. That brings me to my immense drawer of old chargers… do you throw out all your old AC adapters? I usually don’t and in this case an old samsung a460 charger turned out to do the trick nicely. It delivers 5.0V~1A and has thus far charged my Kindle to the point that it thinks it is full.
So in asking around several other associates they don’t think charging a device at the proper voltage (which is the key) with a lower amperage will hurt the unit. It doesn’t seem to have hurt mine, your mileage may vary, Amazon claims any non-kindle store recommended unit may void your warranty, etc. So check your drawers you may have a spare kindle charger and not even know it…
Samsung Travel Adapter model TAD077JBE, Input:120 VAC 60Hz 140 mA Output:5.0V ~ 1A $7.25 online if you search.
Filed under: Kindle
The only risk here is that if the device you’re using to charge with (in this case the 1amp 5v charger) is only rated to produce 1amp; half of what your device is capable of pulling.
Typically, this means the adapter is going to get hot. Real hot. If you put a constant 2amp draw on a 1amp adapter, it may even be capable of catching fire- but typically they’ll just burn out.
In some cases they may produce a voltage drop, which most devices would simply charge from anyway- less voltage typically wont damage something.
nice ,thank you
but i want to know whether the AC Adapters might overheat
This gave me an idea. You can recharge the kindle using one of those energizer cell phone chargers. They cost 10 -15 dollars, just look for the samsung one with the right plug.
I tried it and it works.