USB Amps: What Actually Happens When You Plug In
Daniel wrote in with a drawer full of five-volt gadgets, dubious adapters, and one big question: does the plug have to match the device's expected amperage? The answer flips the instinct most of us have. Current isn't pushed into a device — it's pulled by the device, which means an over-spec charger is harmless and an under-spec one is where things actually go wrong. Along the way: why a 1996 connector with a 4.5-watt spec ceiling pushes 30 watts in the wild, how the Battery Charging 1.2 handshake works (it's just shorting two data pins), why a Nexus 7 once starved itself on a 2.1-amp port…
The skinny
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