Some mobile phone companies say that you must use branded chargers to ensure good battery life. Firstly, they'll never know what you've used to charge your phone, but is there any actual legal standing on this? That is, if they did somehow find out you weren't using a genuine charger, could they actually refuse a warranty claim?
Which manufacturers say this?
If they did not supply a charger with the phone, it is hard to see how they can have any form of recourse.
Its actually the re-seller of the phone, I've not checked the manufacturers line. IIRC they only ever say 'We recommend genuine chargers.....'
Edit - just looked at the manufacturers website and they make no mention whatsoever of using a branded charger.
We had a third party charger nuke 2 phones in a matter of days. So I think they're entirely in their rights to try and enforce you only use recommended chargers. How they can enforce this though, I have no idea...
Its actually the re-seller of the phone
Well, it depends what you're buying - brand new, or a refurb, but I daresay they would struggle to demonstrate that is a reasonable contract term in a consumer contract unless they supplied the specific charger at the time of sale.
We had a third party charger nuke 2 phones in a matter of days.
Really? That's definitely unusual - I thought with Li-Ion batteries generally most of the 'smarts' is at the battery end
Given that my last two phones have come with cable and no charger.
A warranty doesn't have any legal standing at all. It's something which is offered by manufacturers (or I suppose, a reseller) in addition to your statutory rights, so they can refuse what they like. The only terms they'd be obliged to adhere to are the ones detailed in their warranty agreement.
The retailer is bound by the Consumer Rights Act. This is a legal guarantee which cannot be waived. If a device failed in the first six months due to a faulty charger, they'd have to prove that.
It's a subtle but critical difference, don't confuse the two.
The only terms they’d be obliged to adhere to are the ones detailed in their warranty agreement
Does consumer law not have some stipulations?
As above (ninja edit, sorry).
I'm happy to be proven wrong but I'm not aware of a requirement to provide any warranty at all; but if they do then they have to honour what they promise.
My Huawei will charge at clearly different speeds depending on the charger brick used.
It tells me slow, fast or super.
It would be reasonable to assume that plugging a cheap phone into a charger that can deliver 4.5A could do damage.
From a bit of previous googling though, its more likely cheap miswired gas station cables that cause damage. Also note that its the Huawei cable together with the brick that enable the supercharging output.
I've clearly forgotten more that I've read.. but heat kills batteries so charging speed can mitigate this.
Battery life is also lengthened by not charging to full and staying in the 40-80% range. I don't think android allows software/hardware to stop charging at 80% so our devices rely on app notifications and a manual unplugging.
Yeah.
This is a different question, but it's worth noting that USB charging is not like the old universal power adapters we used to plug into Astro Wars. A negotiation occurs and it should work out something that device, charger and cable are all happy with. So it should be safe.
However this assumes that each part adheres to specification. If you've bought a charger for 99p from somewhere that has a four-week delivery time then it might work, it might harm the device, or it might explode and burn your house down.