Magsafe On An Android, Cats And Dogs Living Together

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We’re thinking most Hackaday readers have at one time or another been tasked with replacing the power connector in a laptop. Anyone who has done so can easily see the genius behind the Apple Magsafe connector. Since the second gen iPhone, there have been rumors Apple will release a cellphone with the Magsafe connector, a great idea, seeing as how cell phones are thrown around even more than laptops. [Tony] got tired of waiting, and had an Android device anyway, so he decided to retrofit a Magsafe power adapter to his Note II.

In the interest of excess, [Tony] is using the absurdly large ZeroLemon 9300mAh battery and case for his device, giving him a lot of room for this hardware mod. A tiny 3D printed adapter fits around a slightly modified Magsafe connector, and with a little bit of super glue and solder, the connector is wired up to the charging port.

Of course the charger isn’t a stock Apple power supply; it’s just another Magsafe plug wired into a 5V wall wart. We’re not going to take a guess at what would happen if [Tony] plugged a stock Apple charger into his modded phone, but the mod works perfectly without the danger of ripping a USB port out of his phone.

33 thoughts on “Magsafe On An Android, Cats And Dogs Living Together

  1. > We’re not going to take a guess at what would happen if [Tony] plugged a stock Apple charger into his modded phone

    It might blow up the phone, but more likely the phone wouldn’t apply the correct resistance to activate the power supply, and not much would happen. See “The charger startup process” in this article: http://www.righto.com/2013/06/teardown-and-exploration-of-magsafe.html

    Having said that, I wouldn’t want to use my phone to test it.

    1. I did some testing on a couple of Apple supplies, 65W and 85W, that article isn’t completely correct.

      The standby output voltage is a few volts, when a capacitor is connected to the output the voltage drops to nearly 0V, then slowly rises, when it reaches about 0.4V the supply turns on 16.5V, if the load doesn’t immediately try to draw some current the supply turns off.

      There is no problem running a DCDC converter off one of these supplies, such as a LED driver. But a resistive load will not work without a starter circuit. Another approach is to open the supply and short out or bypass the FET that turns the output on.

      The 85W supply will increase the voltage as a linear function of the current between 3.6A and 4.6A, at 3.6A the voltage is 16.5V and at 4.6A the voltage is 18.5V.

    1. Nope.

      Actually he didn’t make the connectors, just modified them. He doesn’t talk about where he got them but I would imagine they are removed from some old Apple product. You can’t violate a patent just by buying a product from the company that does hold the patent, even if you do use it in a way they never intended.

      Maybe I am wrong and he bought them from some company that makes cheap knockoffs. I’m sure that would violate some law though on a scale that nobody is likely to care.

    1. If you’re going to be pedantic about units, use SI units (9300mAh at 3.7V is 123 kJ).

      Otherwise, use mAh because it’s consistent with what everyone else uses for phone batteries, thus making comparison easier.

    2. As large USB battery pack became cheap, some boasted performances by using 3.7V-equivalent capacity, which is the nominal voltage for one Li-ion cell. This gives ethically max mAh count so it’s common in USB/phone battery packs.

  2. Yes, i would love to have a phone with a huge magnet that would pick up every piece of metal shavings i get near. The speakers on phones and laptops are bad enough without having an even stronger magnet right at the power jack.

        1. Ignore fartface. He’s a well known HaD troll who’s never said something constructive in his life, not to mention has no idea how to use Google and is so incredibly unlucky guessing that you could pretty much say the exact opposite to him and be right every time.

  3. no magnets added to the phone? cuz I was gonna say ‘fuck your magnetometer’ I don’t know anything about this Apple patented technology, because i’m allergic to Apple. I just charge my battery by rectifying and transforming stray electromagnetic noise from the environment.. ok, no I don’t, but what ever happened to that? ‘AirPower’ from RCA

    1. that would be perfectly acceptable unless.. oh.. i don’t know.. you wanted to USE your phone while it was charging!?

      That’s the major drawback to inductance charging… you have to park the phone on a pad and not touch it.. oh, and hope no one calls you when you’re out of the room.. I’ve seen a lot of charge pads get screwed up cause the radios in the phone fried the coil. Also if the vibrator is on, some phones can walk off the pad.. seen that too..

  4. This would be a great hack for the three or four of us who still have a Nokia N900 lying around. Those things were notorious for easily broken USB ports.

    1. My USB port lasted until the mainboard died (not sure what happened, but the whole system just shut down on me one day). My physics lecturer bought the screen off me though. Between us, we had a working N900!

      But yes, I’ve always been nervous about these tiny USB ports breaking. They look so flimsy…

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