[N.Ebrahim]

Sorry everyone i was asleep!

Right to clear up quite a bit of confusion. Firstly the Bold 9000 is an older blackberry, and has a mini usb charging port.

The Playbook is newer, and therefor has the micro usb port, which all blackberry's have been using for the last two three years (ish).

I have a simple adapter which converts between the micro /mini outputs (as posters have mentioned before). It costs me �10! and it saves me lugging around a second charger. I have a torch 9800 as well. The fact is with the adapter you can plug it it.
Now the adapter it'self is not the reason the battery overload, it is the charger (according to RIM).

And yes the playbook does have a orange tip on the charger. (At least mine does) but the colour is only the aesthetics! Some countries might do black! I don't know!! But what i do know, is that the power is different, and it fried my battery!! (according to RIM)

[Gregory Ryan]

My dog decided he needed to chew my PlayBook charger so I had to get the stand. Now I have a TouchPad too though and I assume its output is similar. (The charger that is)

[X04D00]

Well, if all of that is indeed true, then the only thing I can come up with is that the charger was meant for devices that use the micro USB port, and may have conflicted with other devices when you forced it to charge a device with a micro usb port.

[N.Ebrahim]

We'll I've told you guys what's happened now

And what Rim told me!

So if you decide to use it anyway, be aware, if your battery goes boom i did warn you, and you'll know why its happened!!! !!

[newshutr]

[B]

Right to clear up quite a bit of confusion. Firstly the Bold 9000 is an older blackberry, and has a mini usb charging port.

The Playbook is newer, and therefor has the micro usb port, which all blackberry's have been using for the last two three years (ish).

Hind sight is always 20/20...especially when it's pointed out to you...repeatedly.

Using the Playbook wall charger is fine..

[newshutr]

Starting to see a pattern here that the chargers that have the orange tip are countries that use a higher voltage...

The OP hasn't stated where he resides..

Electricity Around the World

[Mr Bigs]

The Blackberry playbook comes with a similar looking charger to most blackberry chargers, but you'll notice it comes with an orange tip; not a black tip!

Why?? Because it's a totally different voltage!

A regular blackberry phone charger has an output of 5Volts // 700mA.
A blackberry playbook charger has a higher output of 5Volts // 2A (2000mA).

Basically it provides almost three times the power! Now this does mean its a rapid charger! But not so simple!

If your charge your blackberry playbook with a regular black charger it will charge the playbook safely, but take about three times longer!!

On the other hand charging your phone with an orange charger it will load it with three times the power! Now the problem is that older blackberries cannot handle this level of power coming in; SO IT WILL RUIN THE BATTERY!!!

All phones newer then the following are fine to charge with the orange coloured charger:

Bold 9780 or newer
Curve 8520 or newer
Pearl3G 9105 or newer
Torch 9800 or newer.

All older phones will get ruined by the charger! The battery will end up getting fried! Maybe not straight away, but don't use it! Be safe!!

You need to learn a little about electricity !!!! The battery draws the current it wants the charger just has the potential to supply more current. The key factor is voltage.

[lophreaque]

No fried battery with my 9630 or my 9930.
The battery management circuits are pretty sophisticated for LiIon cells in consumer electronics for a simple reason: They do not want consumers to have battery fires. It is very serious when Li lights off, I can tell you from personal experience.
Most people can not get their old NiCd charging experiences out of their minds and think it applies to LiIon cells too.
If you are a RC enthusiast, all bets are off as these guys are getting the fastest possible charge times and the most performance available from that chemistry. Very different from a cell phone charger.
The community appreciates a "watch out" story like this, but it is easy to make some incorrect assumptions about the technology from remarks from some guy handling customer complaints at RIM. Did not the OP say he yelled at them for an hour? Man, I would say almost anything to end that conversation.

[newshutr]

We'll I've told you guys what's happened now

And what Rim told me!

So if you decide to use it anyway, be aware, if your battery goes boom i did warn you, and you'll know why its happened!!! !!

Probably believe what your carrier tells you about your phone too..

[lophreaque]

To expand a bit, RC guys expect an occasional fire with their batteries given the abuse they dish out regularly. Not so in consumer electronics.

[ilker-uk]

over volting the batt cause the boom or fire ,charging with higher amp only cause shorter battery life on long term...
overcharge is dangerous!!!! dont leave them on charge overnight

[OMGitworks]

Is this an international v US voltage issue? I have used my PB charger on my 9650 without incident... so far. Do I need to stop doing that??

[Bulldawg]

Wow, so much misinformation packed into one thread. What's been forgotten, however, is that BlackBerry sells the PlayBook charger as a rapid charger for phones. Crackberry sells the same charger for phones as well. And, Crackberry has quoted RIM as saying the PlayBook charger can be used to charge phones.

BlackBerryPremiumCharger - RIM US

Here's the compatibility list for the rapid charger:

◦BlackBerry� PlayBook� tablet
◦BlackBerry� Bold� 9930/9900
◦BlackBerry� Torch� 9860/9850
◦BlackBerry� Torch� 9810
◦BlackBerry� Torch� 9800
◦BlackBerry� Bold� 9780
◦BlackBerry� Bold� 9700
◦BlackBerry� Bold� 9650
◦BlackBerry� Curve� 9370/9360/9350
◦BlackBerry� Curve� 3G 9300
◦BlackBerry� Curve� 8900
◦BlackBerry� Curve� 8500 series
◦BlackBerry� Tour� 9630
◦BlackBerry� Style� 9670
◦BlackBerry� Storm2� 9550
◦BlackBerry� Storm� 9530
◦BlackBerry� Pearl� 3G 9100 series
◦BlackBerry� Pearl� Flip 8200 series

Near as I can tell, that's every single BlackBerry that has been shipped with a micro USB port. I don't know why the OP was told over the phone that his rapid charger killed his phone's battery, but it won't. Maybe since he was yelling at the rep about his dead battery, the rep just told him anything to get him off the phone. That's what I would have done.

I charged my Storm 2 for three months using the rapid charger without any ill effects.

My Storm 2 didn't do this, but in the engineering screens on my 9930, it tells me that the max charging rate is 1230, which just happens to be 1C for this battery. When I plug my PlayBook charger into my 9930, it reports a chage rate of 1230, not the 1800 that the charger is capable of. The phone will protect the battery.

[laurah2215]

The PB charger (the one that came with the PB, not the rapid charger that is sold separately) chargers my BB( 9780) perfectly fine. The one thing I did notice, however, is that my BB will get warm when charging with the PB charger.

[SixStringMadness]

I know there's quite a bit of misinformation in forums of all kinds, but this thread takes the cake.

[lophreaque]

Yes. it may be a record-breaker...

[Altarocks]

I'm certain the OP has set some sort of record for exclamation points in one post...

[AbstraKt]

Has nobody linked Kevin's blog post negating this topic??

[sookster54]

I don't suggest putting a phone into a 2A charger, there's a reason why it's lower for phones.

Grahamf, powered USB hubs are the same as PC USB, ~500mA per port, you're just reading the power plug's output reading.

[eds817]

"Compatible with BlackBerry� smartphones with a micro-USB charging port. Charges smartphones 2x faster than a traditional smartphone charger"

BlackBerry premium charger features

[Chaddface]

"Compatible with BlackBerry� smartphones with a micro-USB charging port. Charges smartphones 2x faster than a traditional smartphone charger"

BlackBerry premium charger features

I was just going to post the same link. Yes Regis. Final answer. Use it and enjoy the faster charging rate. I have been using the PB charger for my 9700,9800 and PB for about 4 months now with no ill effect. The rapid charger will only work for the PB so I don't know how it entered the conversation.

[Angelo_Campher]

I've been charging my 9700 with the PlayBook charger since I got it and haven't noticed anything detrimental thus far. I'm in South Africa and I had to buy a plug converter because the charger I have uses American sockets. Don't know if that is the reason I haven't had any problems.

My 9700 battery doesn't get too hot either.

[FF22]

Electricity, the "benign" stuff that lights our homes and runs our appliances and powers our electronics is magical. But it is also dangerous and its mysteries, well, mystify most people. Helping not a whit is that every device uses a different wall wart (ac adapter) with different size plugs (both usb mini and micro but also the until recently barrel shaped ones) and sometimes even different polarity (inside pin, outside pin, upper ring, lower ring or orange ring) and then the different measurements.

So the fact that SOMETHING (wall wart) pushes out different xxx's or yyy's or even zzz's confuses the heck out of most of us NON-electrical engineers.

Then add in the changes in battery technology (nicad, nickel metal hydride and lithium/lithion??) and heat and you have more confusion.

This thread is not unusual. At least, I don't think so. But it is now long enough to add more confusion as everyone throws in more and more "advice" and "knowledge" and "facts."

You know, I don't even know where my pb charger is anymore as I've moved the pb to the rapid charger wall-wart (not the dock). Maybe it's the one I now use to charge my Bold/9650 but I'm not sure how to tell.

[Chaddface]

I think we should just use RIM's answer as "fact". It can be used to charge any bb phone with a micro-usb. I don't see any reason to challenge RIM's engineers.

F2- Read the charger output. The 1.8a is the PB charger.

[FF22]

I think we should just use RIM's answer as "fact". It can be used to charge any bb phone with a micro-usb. I don't see any reason to challenge RIM's engineers.

F2- Read the charger output. The 1.8a is the PB charger.

I agree - Rim's chart or info is acceptable to me.

I found 3 bb chargers in my quick search. I did find it - it is the most "modern" looking in a cubist fashion. (I've got one from my 8830 (older mini-usb, from my Bold/9650, one I purchased from Crackberry - nice, compact, travel, and now the pb one).

I have a drawer full of these things. Ones for my Motorola TWO s9 headphones, for my jawbone earpieces, for my tomtom and the list goes on and on.

I use my older Verizon car charger - mini-usb with an mini-micro adapter in the car and also in motels using another adapter that takes "cigarette" plugs and plugs into the wall.