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Help Charging Issues

saptech

Android Expert
Dec 9, 2011
3,757
927
Third Stone from the Sun
The wife got her S3 (Verizon) in December and it seems in January she is having charging issues with it. It seems that it will not fully charge using the stock charger that came with the phone. We have also tried different chargers, one is my Stratosphere charger.

She took it to a corp. store and they gave her a new charger but it's a Motorola wall charger. It looks like the same thing has been happening using it.

I believe it may be the phone's charging port, because the other chargers are charging my phone, Moto G, without issues.

I've searched on the internet and it seems this may be a wide spread problem with the S3 phones/chargers. I've also blew out the port on the phone with canned air.

Any ideas/suggestions on a fix!
 
The s3 has like a safety "feature" in its kernel that detects faulty cables (imo its there to force us to use samsung chargers) but its over sensetive.
I have two samsung chargers that charge other phones fine but wont work in my s3.
I think the best thing to try is a new samsung charger.
Im no expert on it but i think the samsung ones are wired differently and most non samsung chargers will make the phone charge slower (even though they have the same output current).
Hope someone else can clarify that :thumbup:
 
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Well, she took the phone to a verizon corp. store and they gave her the moto charger, the guy said it should work just as good as the original one. But we know all those sales people don't know alot.

I did air blow the phone's port and she charged the phone, it seems to have charged up to 90% before she had to leave. We'll keep an eye out on it and see if that makes a difference.

Thnx.
 
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The s3 has like a safety "feature" in its kernel that detects faulty cables (imo its there to force us to use samsung chargers) but its over sensetive.
I have two samsung chargers that charge other phones fine but wont work in my s3.
I think the best thing to try is a new samsung charger.
Im no expert on it but i think the samsung ones are wired differently and most non samsung chargers will make the phone charge slower (even though they have the same output current).
Hope someone else can clarify that :thumbup:

I use my a old HTC charger on a very rare occasion at work (I usually use a wireless charger now) and it seems to work ok. It's 1000mah and does not use a seperate usb cable. I've noticed that the cable that came with my S3 is missing 1 pin compared to every other micro-usb cable that I have. I'm on my 2nd S3 (exchanged my 1st one within the first 2 weeks I had it) and both cables were/are like that. I'm not sure what that has to do with anything though since it works. But I love my Nokia wireless charger even if it is a little slow lol :) I have 2, one on my desk at work and one on my desk at home. If I'm not using it that's where it usually sits so my battery is rarely ever below 50% since I get to charge it so much.

What are some good power saving options we can check on her phone to help save the battery from draining while in use?

Thnx.
You can turn off Wifi when not connected to a network, turn off gps, turn off wireless location that's a huge battery hog for me, and keep the brightness low or at least on auto. There is a power saving mode you can turn on and configure some stuff that it will do like underclock the processor a little.
 
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Well, it turns out the charging port on the phone was bad and they sent her another phone. What I didn't understand, at the Corporate store, they told us it was the charger and gave her a Motorola charger. It didn't really make a difference. I'm not sue why Corp. didn't test the charging port some kind of way first.

So she called and talked to tech on the phone and he decided to exchange the phone.

So far all is well and she can quit bugging me!
 
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Hi there.

It looks like most of the S3 phones came with poor quality charging ports. When I bought mine, everything worked fine for like 6 months, then I started to have charging problems (battery wasn't charging 100%, only 40%, sometimes 60%) so I took it to the store and they fixed it after 2 weeks of complain. Everything went fine for another 2 months but then I got the same problem, I took it to the store and they sent it to fix, they gave me back my phone after 3 weeks and they said "EVERYTHING IS OK, YOUR PHONE HAS NO PROBLEMS, WE UPDATED YOUR SOFTWARE" but back in my home the problem was there, it wasnt charging the battery.

I gave up and and bought an universal battery charger like this one (7 bucks) and my battery was charging again over the nights to 100%!!!

After a couple of months I bought another battery charger like that one, and a generic S3 battery (20 bucks) for having more autonomy on my workdays. My suggestion for you is to buy an universal battery charger.

Good luck.
 
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My charging port seems to be very solid, and snug, and when I plug in the charger, everything seems to be working correctly, but my phone is only 2-2.5 weeks old so not sure if I may run into a charging issue a little down the road, but I still feel most of these weird issues such as a short press on the home button bringing up task manager is part of 4.3 and not the device itself. I did do the factory reset after the 4.3 update and the home button is the only issue I have, but I still feel it's related to 4.3 regardless of a factory reset, and hopefully once we receive 4.4 KitKat, we're all back to normal.
 
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My charging port seems to be very solid, and snug, and when I plug in the charger, everything seems to be working correctly,

I'm still using 4.2 so I cant talk for 4.3.

But I can tell you that when I plugged my charger into the port sometimes the charging icon appeared but it wasnt really charging. Even worse sometimes the icon said it was charging but the % was decreasing. :p
 
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The wife got her S3 (Verizon) in December and it seems in January she is having charging issues with it. It seems that it will not fully charge using the stock charger that came with the phone. We have also tried different chargers, one is my Stratosphere charger.

She took it to a corp. store and they gave her a new charger but it's a Motorola wall charger. It looks like the same thing has been happening using it.

I believe it may be the phone's charging port, because the other chargers are charging my phone, Moto G, without issues.

I've searched on the internet and it seems this may be a wide spread problem with the S3 phones/chargers. I've also blew out the port on the phone with canned air.

Any ideas/suggestions on a fix!


I also had a problem charging my S3 with the charger that came with the phone. It would charge the phone very slowly and not charge up all the way. I thought it was the chargers fault, but I found out that the problem was with the detachable USB cable that came with the charger, not the charger itself.

What I noticed was with the original charger and USB cable, when I plugged the phone into the charger and looked at the Battery statistics, it would show "USB" charging, even though it was plugged into the wall charger. After changing the USB cable with one that I had from my old GS2 but keeping the same GS3 charger, the battery statistics would show "AC charging" and the phone would charge much faster.

Why...? I don't know, but with the original GS3 USB cable and charger, my GS3 would always charge slowly in the "USB charging" mode. Changing the cable fixed this for me and now it always charges in the "AC charging" mode..

Also, I also have an old Jabra bluetooth headset charger with it's own cable that has no problem charging my phone in the AC mode. Check the battery statistics while the phone is charging and see if it is charging in AC or USB mode.
 
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