[AT&T Samsung Galaxy Note I717] pj_rage:
Ok guys. I have a little more information for you.

I received and tested my motorola charger (linked earlier in this thread). With the screen on, and using google navigation, the battery drains slowly at approximately 1% every 10 minutes. Compare this with using the OEM charger with an inverter, which results in basically no drain and actually did charge VERY slowly IIRC.

I did open the motorola charger, and there are only TWO wires in the cable. BUT, the data pins ARE shorted, allowing fast charge. I assume that they are shorted at the connector, but I was not willing to ruin the charger further by cutting open the connector. I do know for sure that they are shorted and it's fast charge, though. I do believe it is a good option for now for car chargers, but I'm personally hoping to find something that puts out *just* a little more so that there is zero drain when using the GPS with the screen on.

I've also discovered an easy to way to determine what the charge current for your charger is. You guys can use this method to quickly determine if your charger is using fast charge, or not. It is software only, does not require any special hardware, cables, multimeters or anything. You *might* need to be rooted to do it, but I don't think so. I'm currently rooted and did not try without root to be certain.

-Download your favorite terminal app, I just grabbed "Terminal Emulator" from the market.

-Open the terminal, and with a charger connected, type the following:

cat /sys/class/power_supply/battery/batt_current_adc

The reported number will be the charge current for your charger. Divide the number you receive by 10, and that is the mA. For example, if a USB charger reports "4851", divide by 10 and the charge current is 485.1mA. Note that this only reports charging current -- it cannot report the current drain, and will just report "0" when you try it without a charger connected.

If you're really still curious, you can see what type of charger the phone actually thinks is connected to your phone (ie, whether or not the phone thinks the data lines are shorted) by entering the following instead:

cat /sys/class/power_supply/battery/charging_source

The reported number should be a 0, 1, or 2. 0 = no charger connected, 1 = data lines NOT shorted, USB normal charge, and 2 = data lines ARE shorted, AC fast charge.

These methods are a lot easier and faster way to check the charge current of various chargers without having to hack open and cut up wires and use a multimeter, etc. If you see numbers any higher than 500mA, then you will know that the data pins are shorted and the phone thinks that the charger is an "AC" charger, and has enabled fast charging.

Hopefully a few people can report back with chargers that they have found that have the data pins shorted, and we can compile a list of good ones that work with our phones. For reference, my OEM samsung charger reports just under 1000mA (~996mA +/-). Despite the mA numbers I provided in the first post for the ipad charger, with the modified cable that shorts the data pins, it does charge pretty good, basically the same as the OEM charger. (This does not necessarily conflict with my measured numbers... because I didn't measure actual voltage the charger was putting out, and because I was measuring the power into the battery charging chip, not into the battery itself. It is definitely possible that the ipad charger, even with the numbers I reported, had/has slightly higher voltage, meaning it's putting the same power in and the battery charging chip is regulating the power out to be ~1000mA).

Hopefully a few of you guys, can get back to us with some numbers. I'm particularly curious to hear from those of you who have chargers that they claim are faster than the OEM samsung one. Please report back with what your OEM charger measures for charging current, and then what your other charger measures. I am more skeptical than ever that our phones can (without modification) charge at a higher current than 1000mA, so I doubt any charger is faster than OEM (unless your OEM charger is defective), but I do hope to be proven wrong :)