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.
Charger cable of the cellphone is more likely to save cellphone from falling or at least slow down it’s fall as phones are relatively light when compared to laptops… At least in my case…
Equally likely to cause a fall when you trip over the cable. Which happens a lot.
it’s not very likely if you have power outlets on back of your table… just need some minimal cable placement skills :-)
> 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.
I agree. In this case the signal pads won’t be hooked up and an official charger won’t send juice down the cable.
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.
Apple might sue this guy. This is sad that such simple charger design is patented by apple and not available to non-Mac users :(
Apple won’t sue one guy making a hack to his own phone.
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MagSafe search for Sanho Corporation. Apple sued Sanho for reusing Magsafe connectors.
Apple sued Sanho for reselling magsafe connectors, reusing hardware for personal purposes is legal in all countries i know of.
You can’t be sued for patent infringement for a hobby / DIY / hackjob. Now if you SOLD the connector or the modded phone it’s a different story.
Tell that to George Hotz.
Better than the gaffer’s tape holding the power cord into my laptop right now.
Cool hack. You mean 34.4Wh battery I think, 9300mAh is an absurd play on units for people who do not understand how electricity works.
mAh is by far the most popular unit for describing the capacity of batteries in things like phones.
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.
I have some 1uF capacitors labeled “1000KpF,” and that just seems immoral. :D
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.
Its great, when he actually has to charge it………
Also, it probably takes a long time to charge that beast.
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.
Magnet is on the charger. do you know how magsafe works?
Oh. I was thinking the same thing. Makes much more sense on charger.
Yes, i know how magsafe works, the magnet is on the computer. the metal block on the charger is just a piece of ferromagnetic metal.
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.
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
Maths beat it !
really? who cares about this. cell phones this days can easily charge via wireless. much better solution.
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..
If the low power radio transmitter in the phone fries the transmitter coil for the inductive charger you have a serious design problem…
My kettle has a magnetic power connector. It’s older than magsafe.
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.
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…