FoxKat, You're a fantastic source of information. Thank you for all of your comments. A little tiny bit of egg on the face is OK. I always have bits of food on my face after a good feast...saving it for later.
FWIW, a good friend of mine who has a PhD in electrical engineering confirmed that any GOOD QUALITY cell phone charger should be just fine with any phone. The output amperage listed on the charger is the maximum output that the charger will ALLOW to go to the phone. The electronics in the phone actually determine how much amperage the phone draws while charging. The only problem could come from using a charger with a higher than specified amperage output IF your phone has a defective charging circuit and draws more power than it should. Cheap chargers may have poor connections and thus unstable power supply and could possibly damage the phone.
Final answer is that as long as you are using a good charger from a cell phone manufacturer, it shouldn't matter which one you use.
Remember, advise is usually worth what you pay for it, so make your own choice people. I think all manufacturers will always say: " Only use our charger" . They sell more chargers that way, and that's what it's all about...money.
jkaod, your comments and support are certainly appreciated. I try very hard to provide as credible information as possible, and do a ton of research before posting what I conclude to be an accurate representation of the facts and in a manner which is both informational and relatively easy to comprehend. It's nice to know that some of you out there appreciate the honest and concerted efforts I put forth.
In regards to your friend, the PhD, there's no question that a GOOD QUALITY charger as you and he put it (I take to mean one manufactured by a reputable company, preferrably one made specifically for another competing phone), and one that matches closely the voltage of the OEM charger, as well as one that also closely matches the current of the OEM charger is most likely safe to use. The devil is in the details. The average joe/jane Android phone buyer knows little if any about voltages/amperages, and even more importantly about failures of devices caused by their innocent mistakes and the warranties they will then try to use to resolve those failures and how easily they can be voided.
I am willing to go out on a limb here and say that the overwhelming percentages of "bad battery" claims which have resulted in phones being replaced under warranty were due to nothing more than user-error. The statistics of the number of so-called "bad batteries" being tested good by manufacturers (approaching 90%), goes to prove that thoery. This of course includes things such as ROM flashing, Bloatware freezing or deleting, poor programming by Devs, poor configuration of the phone's scheduling of access to data by the user, bad charge & discharge practices of the user, and so many other non-battery/charger specific problems, that putting all the blame on chargers that are incompatible would be foolish on my part.
Still there are the minor annoyances that these, we'll call them "less than 100% compatible" chargers may bring, such as the ones described by TisMyDroid and so many others with "ghost typing" which are likely brought on by either poor filtering of RF interference and/or residual AC ripple. More poigniant are the potentially major issues such as batteries overheating, the internal charging components of the phone being abused and potential failure of them resulting in downline failure of the battery, errors in the charging and monitoring of voltages from the "dirty power", etc. Any flutter imparted into a DC circuit causes stress and heat buildup on certain DC based components and can trigger early failure.
The issue of erratic digitizers may only be a very minor visible indication of a far more damaging effect which could result in incorrect charging or worse, failure to cut off current to the battery when it may have reached the threshold voltage because the meter reports inaccurately, potentially putting the battery at risk of full-blown melt-down due to internal shorting caused by "plating" (
http://lithiumbatteryresearch.com/Plating.php ).
It will be interesting to see how the industry and the end-user will deal with the coming sweeping change to a USB Charger standard, since as I'm sure you know, there will always be manufacturers out there who are out of reach for retribution and will do the minimum required to get an inferior product to market. It will be a time of increased finger-pointing as those inferior chargers are blamed for increased failures of "the new standard" devices meant to accept those chargers. In the end, we all suffer because the increased warranty claims and potential increased litigation and possible settlements as well as injuries or worse will only server to drive costs for everyone higher.
Not to disagree with you specifically, but to raise one important point...to say that all manufacturers are interested in is money and that this is the reason they recommend only their chargers is to ignore the entire insurance industry. These manufacturers are under extremely heavy scrutiny by the insurance industry as well as consumer and government watchdogs not only to be sure their products meet or exceed specifications, but even more importantly to be sure that they are safe for consumers and essentially "idiot-proof". Without having tight control on things such as the power going in, how can they defend themselves in a court if an injury should result?
Insurance companies are interested in money, perhaps even more than the manufacturers themselves, since money (or the protection of same) IS their product. I have been in the Financial Services industry for over 23 years, and started working in the insurance industry. I suggest that perhaps the largest driving factor to mandating their own chargers is not to increase profit directly through the sale of those chargers, but so they can keep insurance costs to a minimum and that relates back to control. Didn't your phone come with a charger? I know mine did, and if so, then where's the increased profit? They could have gotten essentially the same price for the phone when all is said and done if there were no charger supplied and you had to buy one off the shelf at the retail or online store. Your car doesn't come with a lifetime of gas either, yet I don't hear anyone complaining.
In the end, if you give the keys of your vehicle to an inexperienced and improperly credentialed driver and allow them to take the wheel completely, you are almost assuredly setting yourself up for failure at some point. Same, I'll argue will be the course with the new "standard", since I believe it places far too much due diligence on the consumer and removes a layer of much needed protection.
For now, I'll stay with my Motorola Approved OEM charger while I simply sit back and enjoy the show.
opcorn:
