How to Better Use Your USB Ports

“How could my phone still power off? How could the USB ports not work? I’m so disappointed...” Wait, before you start a complaint or return for a refund, you may need to read this blog first.

Nowadays, as more and more electronic appliances include a USB cable in the package, what you need to charge your appliance is just an adapter. However, you have to carry it wherever you go and some of these adapters are bulky and space-occupying, which renders the power strip lacking enough outlets for other appliances. To solve this problem, many power strips come with USB ports. You can simply plug your charging cord into the USB port in the power strip and charge your device without an adapter. These power strips are really adapter killers as they are taking the place of the adapters. But can we plug as many devices as we want, or always keep the USB ports occupied? The answer may differ and here is an important tip for you.

Let’s take SUPERDANNY Power Strip as an example. This power strip is featured with 4 USB ports, sharing a max output of 3.1A with each port up to 2.4A. It means that you can charge two phones or more together with these USB ports as long as the total current they need combining does not exceed 3.1A. But if one of them requires more than 2.4A, or they require more than 3.1A in total, all USB ports will stop working until the converter cool down. However, if the USB ports get overloaded constantly or often work on a full load, some parts of the power strip may have a permanent damage. When this happens, you will have to contact the customer service for a new replacement.

To maintain the efficiency and serving time of the USB ports, please always check the charging current needed by your devices and make sure that they don’t exceed what the USB ports can offer.

As the need for charging facilities in a more convenient way increases day by day, we can see more power strips built with just USB ports, which are also known as charging stations. What’s more, thanks to the development of technology, nowadays there are more and more different USB ports being developed for fast charging, like QC USB and PD USB. Let’s take the SUPPERDANNY Multiple USB Charger as an example, which features 3 different kinds of USB ports (standard USB, QC USB, and PD USB), wireless charging platform, and even an LED display to indicate the charging status of your devices.

Generally, USB ports supplies power at 5V ± 5% to power USB downstream devices. To allow for voltage drops, the voltage at the hub port is specified in the range 4.40–5.25V by USB 2.0, and 4.45–5.25V by USB 3.0.

Quick Charge (QC) is a proprietary battery charging protocol developed by Qualcomm, used for managing power delivered over USB, mainly by communicating to the power supply and negotiating a voltage. Quick Charge is supported by devices such as mobile phones which runs on Qualcomm SoCs, and by some chargers; both device and charger must support QC, otherwise QC charging is not attained. It charges batteries in devices faster than standard USB allows by increasing the output voltage supplied by the USB charger, while adopting techniques to prevent the battery damage caused by uncontrolled fast charging and regulating the incoming voltage internally.

In July 2012, the USB Promoters Group announced the finalization of the USB Power Delivery (PD) specification (USB PD rev. 1), an extension that specifies using certified PD aware USB cables with standard USB Type-A and Type-B connectors to deliver increased power (more than 7.5W) to devices with greater power demands. Devices can request higher currents and supply voltages from compliant hosts – up to 2A at 5V (for a power consumption of up to 10W), and optionally up to 3A or 5 A at either 12V (36W or 60W) or 20V (60W or 100W). In all cases, both host-to-device and device-to-host configurations are supported.

Therefore, to better charge your devices, please choose the right USB ports by checking if the charging features of your devices match with that of the ports.

Customer satisfaction has always been our top priority, our designers have dedicated themselves to making our products better and better so that our customers may have a better using experience, safer and more efficient. We only want the best for our customers!