Can I use this charger - what do the electrical figures mean?!

Ectophile

Ignore the stuff on the plug. It's completely irrelevant to what you need.

You need a charger than can supply 5 volts at 2 amps DC. More specifically, it must be 5V, and at least 2A.

If it's got a USB socket on, then it should be 5V anyway, because that's what the USB standard says. The important thing is how much current it can supply. Too little and the phone may not charge.

Lum

When mixing and matching chargers you need to make sure the voltage is the same and that the amperage is at least as high as the "real" charger.

So a 5V 2A Samsung charger can definitely be used to charge the 5V 1A iPhone, but not necessarily the other way around.

Most of these modern USB phones and tablets will attempt to charge off a device that puts out a lower current. They pretty much have to do this as a computer's USB port often only puts out 0.5A. However doing this may not always be satisfactory.

Depending on what apps you are running you might find you are draining the battery faster than you can charge it, particularly if you use satnav. Or it may just refuse to charge and pop up an error message.

For non-USB devices, e.g. clock radios, the amps rating must always be equal or higher than the original charger or it will probably malfunction.