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What is the best car charger for 3g?

N

nitinleew

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 5, 2008
5
0
I haven't received my 3g yet, but I'd like to get the car charger for it.

I have an 8 gig first generation Iphone and a griffin charger. It has the usb input on it, but I can't find the model number to see if it works with the new 3g.

Will griffin's work with the 3g. If not, which ones are available that are recommended?

Thanks in advance.
 
I use the Griffin PowerJolt. That and the PowerJolt SE will both work for both iPhones and iPods as well. I bet that's the one you have already.

The PowerJolt has a USB port that plugs into a car charger. I got that one because it could double as a sync cable if need be.

The SE has the curly cable (like a telephone receiver cable) that goes from the car charger to the iPhone/iPod input.
 
Incase Car and Wall Charger

Incase just recently announced a new wall and car charger. It's a bit pricey, but it's two products in one. I've seen people sell both the car and wall chargers, but you have to carry more than one article at a time. With the USB car chargers other people mention, you may have to buy an extra sync cable. With this product, everything is put into one single item, so you won't forget anything. Plus, it's Apple certified. Just my $0.02.

http://www.goincase.com/products/detail/2in1-wall-car-charger-ec20002
 
Wirelessly posted (Apple Communication Device: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5B108 Safari/525.20)

xtrememac.
 
JuNxXxReY said:
Incase just recently announced a new wall and car charger. It's a bit pricey, but it's two products in one. I've seen people sell both the car and wall chargers, but you have to carry more than one article at a time. With the USB car chargers other people mention, you may have to buy an extra sync cable. With this product, everything is put into one single item, so you won't forget anything. Plus, it's Apple certified. Just my $0.02.

http://www.goincase.com/products/detail/2in1-wall-car-charger-ec20002
Click to expand...

i got this one yesterday. it is sweet it works like a charm with the 3g. Also check your local best buy mine has it on sale this week for $30
 
JuNxXxReY said:
Incase just recently announced a new wall and car charger. It's a bit pricey, but it's two products in one. I've seen people sell both the car and wall chargers, but you have to carry more than one article at a time. With the USB car chargers other people mention, you may have to buy an extra sync cable. With this product, everything is put into one single item, so you won't forget anything. Plus, it's Apple certified. Just my $0.02.

http://www.goincase.com/products/detail/2in1-wall-car-charger-ec20002
Click to expand...

Love this charger. I've had many chargers. Power Jolt was the worst one ever. It broke within 3 months and Griffin didn't want anything to do with it. I bought it when it was first announced, so clearly when it broke, it was less than a year old. Because i didn't have receipt, they couldn't help me. Meanwhile it was still under warranty.
 
My ExtremeMac works great it's solid in the socket, I had the Griffin one, it was loose in the socket so it broke in less than 30days. I still got to keep the griffin cord though so it wasn't a total loss.
 
Just got the Griffin Power Jolt (supposedly approved for 3G iPhone) over a week ago. I tested it out on car trip I'm not positive it works to its full potential, I'll explain why:

During my trip I had purposely drained the iPhone's battery to about 1/2

Plugged in Power Jolt to CIG adapter, charger displayed the "green" ring (per manual)

Plugged in the side connector onto iPhone it turned into a "red" ring (again per manual). That was good sign, until over 1hr later I noticed the "red" ring never went away (never changed back to "green" when iPhone is fully charged). Plus the fact I made sure all "apps" were closed and I didn't use the phone as well.

Now it shouldn't take over 1hr to top off 1/2 drained battery. I know this because it takes just about 15~20min via USB off any of my laptops. I tried this twice, just to be sure and give it the benefit of the doubt.

Could be defective, or isn't "fully" compatible to a certain point. It did charge the battery to full, but no indication from the ring whatsoever. :rolleyes:
 
well, it could technically be fighting an uphill battle. If you were traveling in the car, you could have been going in and out of 3G and wireless areas, and if you have your main set to push through yahoo or check every 15 minutes, then your battery is ALWAYS being used a little.. so everytime the charger is about done,t ehres still a LITTLE juice that was being used.

Try it while sitting still and the main set the manual and see if that works..
 
lindsayanng said:
well, it could technically be fighting an uphill battle. If you were traveling in the car, you could have been going in and out of 3G and wireless areas, and if you have your main set to push through yahoo or check every 15 minutes,
Click to expand...

Yeah - I don't do the "push" deal, not for me. The 3G could make some sense though, but heck at that rate it will never "fully" charge then...;)
 
I use the PowerJolt and haven't had any problems. The bummer is I had to toss my old MonsterCable charger that had a line out jack for my tape adapter, but isn't compatible with the iPhone. Apparently there's no product out there that can charge the iPhone AND provide a line out. So now I have to use the headphone jack and adjust the volume. :(
 
The scosche power adapter I got provided some nice line noise with my iPods. Could've been defective, but I've heard that that is a common problem for a lot of chargers. Beware.
 
You sure about that?

redman042 said:
I use the PowerJolt and haven't had any problems. The bummer is I had to toss my old MonsterCable charger that had a line out jack for my tape adapter, but isn't compatible with the iPhone. Apparently there's no product out there that can charge the iPhone AND provide a line out. So now I have to use the headphone jack and adjust the volume. :(
Click to expand...

http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/autopilot

You will still get the "This accessory is not made...." screen, but it does work, and works well at that.
 
I have the Griffin Power Jolt off of the Apple website, and it's working great. I've noticed that the ring isn't as accurate as I'd hoped it would be (shows green while still charging when iPhone goes to sleep sometimes), but I can always check to see if the charging symbol changes to the charged symbol. I think it's a problem with the trickle charge being improperly detected? I personally like the fact that pretty much any USB device can be charged with it so it's pretty versatile. And I also like the iPod dock connector cable that comes with it. But the thing I like most about it compared to other chargers I have had in the past for previous phones is the fact that the fuse is easily accessible. Others need you to unscrew it to gain access to the fuse, but this charger has a slot that the fuse sits in and can be easily replaced.

I haven't had this for any great length of time (read 1 week), but it seems to be doing a well enough job for me. And at $20, it's not that bad a deal.
 
Get the PowerJolt. Some guy is selling them for $14.99 shipped on eBay right now.

I've used mine since the original iPhone came out and it still works great. I like the fact it uses a USB slot since my wife can also charge her BB Curve with it.
 
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