[AT&T Samsung Galaxy Note I717] dkelley:
electronics class anybody?

it's not the battery's current that decides how much current the note can utilize when plugged in.

a) the charger is powering a circuit in the note, not the battery itself. the circuit in the note decides how much current it can use. it's not set by the battery or it's markings, it's set by this circuit and you and I both don't know what the actual spec is on that (the regulator would be so small that I personally wouldn't be able to see or recognize any writing on it I'm sure, although if these were all full size components then I'd have no problem working out what the true current capability would be).

b) the charger may, depending on the design of the above circuit, be powering both a charging circuit for the battery AND the phone directly itself, as in many LG phones. in which case the phone's current requirement would be IN ADDITION to the battery's charging current requirement. In which case if the battery truly does max out at 1 amp charging input then providing more than 1 amp to the phone would be a very good idea since the phone would otherwise be stealing some of that 1 amp from the charger before it even gets to the battery's charging circuit.

c) a microUSB capable has no maximum cutoff of current it can deliver - it's not hard set. I imagine you know that, however the way you worded it sounds like the cable will cut off anything above 1 amp. This is not true. it will start to heat up over a certain amount of current, and eventually it will fail. What the current is depends strongly on the quality of cable, however. I'm holding onto an LG microUSB power cable right now that certainly has much thicker casing than the samsung cable, although of course the wiring inside may be of any random gauge. The point though is that it's the gauge of the wire that matters. The connector may be very fine with microUSB but it will just fail sooner rather than later if there is too much current draw. The current will still get to the device for the most part, even if it's somewhat higher than 1 amp.

d) I too have seen proof of very clearly faster charging performance when I charged my NOTE using an iPad ac charger compared to the stock samsung charger.

e) I'll tell ya - the samsung charger is awfully small to be providing 1 amp... I'd be surprised if it's actually providing that much current. If it is then fine, but it's pretty likely to me that it's providing less than 1 amp despite it's spec. If it is then using a GOOD quality charger that can provide AT LEAST 1 amp in reality will definitely charge your note faster.

I hope that clarifies things guys.

Based on the above info and my own tests, even if my ipad charger is only being used for a solid 1 amp draw from the note due to the possibility of that being the actual limit set by the power circuit in the note (again we do NOT know the note's current spec purely based on the spec written on the note's battery), it did charge the note faster so that would indicate that the samsung charger isn't performing up to spec. Either that or the note actually can draw more than 1 amp and push it towards a faster charge when available.

---------- Post added at 09:38 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:36 AM ----------

excellent info, thanks for that everybody. I didn't read far enough to see this really cool detail.

Well done :-D