Never, ever, ever, ever use a car charger

When you buy a new phone, the sales representative always wants to upsell you for additional items, at a discount, that you think you want. You are smart wanting to protect your device with a cover, but car chargers do not help. I remember a representative telling me that the new lithium batteries don't have a memory and are fine for car chargers.

It was over 6 years ago when I bought a Palm phone used on Ebay. It came with 4 batteries, a home charger and car charger. It was odd to have so many batteries. When I used the home charger, the phone would last for about 6 hours. It wasn't that long, but it was less than 1.5 hours when I used the car charger. I thought it was the battery and would use another one. After going through all batteries I found 1 of them was the best, but when I would run low away from home I would use the car charger. Then the battery life was much worse than before. i

I resold that phone on Ebay after purchasing a Moto Q. I liked it much more because it was similar to my prior Motorola phone. I did purchase a power inverter along with another home charger. I didn't have another problem with the battery after that. < b>Power inverter with a USB plug may not be safe! I helped my father get a used HTC Thunderbolt that was like new. He really liked the bigger screen and video chat with Google Talk. He didn't complain about having a shorter battery life until he took a trip to Virginia. He told me that the battery was only lasting 2 hours. I asked if he were using the USB plug on his inverter and he said he was. I recommended using the home charger in the outlet of the inverter instead. By the next day he claimed it more than doubled the battery life. Later that week he said it was up to 12 hours.

My advice is to never buy or use a car charger. The voltage is too different and your phone will give you a false sense of power. Buy an inverter, preferably one without a fan, and get an additional home charger from Ebay for under $5 with shipping included. Smart phones are cool and use more power than our older phones. Instead of trying to use a task killer, take care of all of your phone batteries.