[UncleMike]

I got my first BB a few weeks ago, and bought the "universal" Verizon car charger with it, since they knocked about 1/3 off the price. I'm often reluctant to buy VZW-branded accessories, and even more so with "universal" accessories. I looked around for other chargers available online and found that the $20 I paid for the VZW universal charger was hard to beat, at least for anything I would have any confidence in (I wouldn't touch the sub-$10 chargers with a 10' pole).

Giving in to the appearance that what I had purchased was probably a good deal, I opened the package only to find a tag on the device itself indicating that full charging can take 3-3.5 hours. On top of that, there are no labels anywhere on the charger that indicate what the output is, so I have no way comparing the output with the output of the OEM charger that came with my Curve, to see how closely this "universal" charger comes to what my Curve is expecting.

My question is... is there such a thing as a rapid charger (preferably a car charger) that will charge the battery faster (maybe in 1/2 the time), without removing the battery from my Curve, or is this recharge time a natural requirement considering that the Curve has twice the talk/standby time of my previous phone?

[Hua]

Just go to your local Wal Mart and pick up a Belkin car charger for $10. You can use any mini-USB charger made for the Motorla Razr, or any other min-USB charger. I have three of the Belkin ones, one for each vehicle.

Paying $20 is 8x the actual cost of the charger.

[jeffh]

I got my first BB a few weeks ago, and bought the "universal" Verizon car charger with it, since they knocked about 1/3 off the price. I'm often reluctant to buy VZW-branded accessories, and even more so with "universal" accessories. I looked around for other chargers available online and found that the $20 I paid for the VZW universal charger was hard to beat, at least for anything I would have any confidence in (I wouldn't touch the sub-$10 chargers with a 10' pole).

Giving in to the appearance that what I had purchased was probably a good deal, I opened the package only to find a tag on the device itself indicating that full charging can take 3-3.5 hours. On top of that, there are no labels anywhere on the charger that indicate what the output is, so I have no way comparing the output with the output of the OEM charger that came with my Curve, to see how closely this "universal" charger comes to what my Curve is expecting.

My question is... is there such a thing as a rapid charger (preferably a car charger) that will charge the battery faster (maybe in 1/2 the time), without removing the battery from my Curve, or is this recharge time a natural requirement considering that the Curve has twice the talk/standby time of my previous phone?

Car chargers are notoriously inefficient. Your Verizon-branded model is probably as good as any, which isn't saying much. I've used the Belkin models and they're ok as well. The only rapid-charger that I'm aware of is the OEM wall charger. Given the variations in your car's dc output and the manufacturing tolerances in car chargers, it's not surprising that some won't charge a BlackBerry at all. You are better off using the wall-charger for primary charging and the car-charger just for backup.