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Tech News and Commentary
Dave and the team discuss smartphones and the holidays, high-tech robotic pants, Samsung’s foldable smartphone, an Echo speaker and a criminal investigation, Firefox’s price watchlist, Google’s AI impact challenge, FIFA’s increased mobile offering, Walmart’s checkout with me, and more.
Carolyn in Bossier City, Louisiana listens on News Radio 710 KEEL and asked: “My phone is not charging well and I tried another charger. I have a Samsung and it keeps saying use the original charger, but it is lost. Is there any way to get an original charger for the phone?“
You can get the original charger from samsung.com, they have a section on chargers and batteries that lists their different chargers. Now, you’re going to have to identify which one your phone came with, but you should be able to find a replacement there.
Having said that, chargers are generic, so there’s really no reason you should need to get the same one that came with the phone.
You didn’t mention which phone you have, so we can’t know what the specs for that charger are. But as long as your charger outputs the same voltage and amperage, and the cable you have connected to it can carry both as well, your phone shouldn’t care about the brand.
An important thing to keep in mind is that the problem could be the charger, the cable, or the phone itself. Samsung has had issues before with damaged charging ports that couldn’t work at full speed.
Your port could also just be dirty. Often times micro USB ports will get some debris lodged in them and just cleaning them out with a can of compressed air will make all the contacts available to the charger and fast charge will be restored.
If you’re noticing a big change in charging speed, we’d advise you to first check and clean the port and even the charging cable, then check the voltage of the charger to make sure it’s powerful enough to deliver as much power as your phone can take, and if none of those help, then maybe consider buying a specific charger as a last resort, but the brand alone won’t make a difference. Samsung doesn’t make any kind of special unique charger, they’re just USB chargers.
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