Fake Samsung Charger Sold by SnoCo Inc. on Amazon (Reported to Amazon)

[jazzie366]

Re: Fake Samsung Charger Sold by SnoCo Inc. on Amazon (Reported to Amazon)

**UPDATE**

So I decided to tear into this pile of in detail. So here's a few interesting things:

- New Samsung chargers ARE made in Vietnam by R&F Technology Co. Ltd.
- The isolation on the transformer was pretty good, 6 layers of tape on the outside of the transformer and sense coil, then 3 windings of tape in between all the other windings. The wires were kept well away from each other as well.

Now here's where this thing REALLY makes you wanna

- The optocoupler was FAKE, I opened it and there was just a piece of metal bridging both contacts across, totally defeating the isolation.
- Output filtering capacitors had fake vents, they were ground into the case by hand
- The switch mode chip had no traceable number, but it was one that had been seen in other cheapo power supplies that had gone .
- That resistor is quite dodgy, as it's a 4 band resistor with a random black band on the end? The 4 bands before it add up to 3.3 ohms 5% tolerance, it's reading 3 ohms dead on.
- The Y capacitor (blue one for suppression) is fake, it's much thinner than real ones
- Upon grabbing the diode on the end, it immediately snapped off
- Upon grabbing the USB port, it immediately fell to pieces (so I tore it off)

So yeah, this one may have looked better than the others, but in reality it seems to have actually been worse.

[kc8adu]

Re: Fake Samsung Charger Sold by SnoCo Inc. on Amazon (Reported to Amazon)

real ones have polys on the output too.
had a customer bring me a galaxy tab 8 that was shocking her when plugged in.
told her its a counterfeit junk ebay adaptor.
and sure enough she had recently bought it on ebay.
full 120vac on the shell of the usb.
shit like this can kill!
i gave her a good spare and sledgehammered the fake so the trashpickers that dig our dumpster would not try to use it.

[kaboom]

Re: Fake Samsung Charger Sold by SnoCo Inc. on Amazon (Reported to Amazon)

real ones have polys on the output too.
had a customer bring me a galaxy tab 8 that was shocking her when plugged in.
told her its a counterfeit junk ebay adaptor.
and sure enough she had recently bought it on ebay.
full 120vac on the shell of the usb.
shit like this can kill!
i gave her a good spare and sledgehammered the fake so the trashpickers that dig our dumpster would not try to use it.

Worse than "toaster in the tub." At least with THAT, you know it's 120V. People see the "harmless" USB junk and ASSume it's "only" 5V and the phone charges w/o blowing up, buuuut... the whole apparatus is live WRT to grounded objects!

Worse in the UK; 240V from a fake supply, via a cellfone body, severely shocked (killed?) a lady when she leaned on a radiator (while holding fone) some years ago.

[jiroy]

Re: Fake Samsung Charger Sold by SnoCo Inc. on Amazon (Reported to Amazon)

Yesterday i bought An Intel CPU Kaby Lake 3.6 GHZ , 8 MB cache , and to my surprise , it is Made in Vietnam .
What i'm trying to say here , is , probably the Charger isn't fake and branded , but like anything else , it is a cheaper design . Guess Vietnamese labor are even cheaper than Chinese too , lol .
Take Laptop batteries for example . Most of them come without thermal fuse , and that's why , most of the companies have problems returning batteries , so no wonder if they want to save some pennies for optocouplers .

[japlytic]

Re: Fake Samsung Charger Sold by SnoCo Inc. on Amazon (Reported to Amazon)

On a related subject, there are a lot of fake Apple chargers on Amazon (and other places) as well (there was even a lawsuit against a company suppling fakes) - check out the UL report at - the failure rate probably won't surprise you.

[stj]

Re: Fake Samsung Charger Sold by SnoCo Inc. on Amazon (Reported to Amazon)

take a look here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvSX7JkYNZw

the point of showing this, is that you cant judge quality by price.
i have a few of the 1.2A ones in the video and reccomend everybody grab a couple while they can!

[budm]

Re: Fake Samsung Charger Sold by SnoCo Inc. on Amazon (Reported to Amazon)

Leakage current test.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Fake Samsung Charger Sold by SnoCo Inc. on Amazon (Reported to Amazon)

I have a guy who does glass-only repairs of phones and he also sells refurb/return genuine Samsung chargers. I'll have one of those any day instead of dubious brands (or no-brands) on ebay or aliexpress.

I have exactly ONE "compatible" charger currently in use, i bought that from a supermarket and it wasn't the cheapest one. So far, so good, but i've yet to tear into it....

[momaka]

Re: Fake Samsung Charger Sold by SnoCo Inc. on Amazon (Reported to Amazon)

- The optocoupler was FAKE, I opened it and there was just a piece of metal bridging both contacts across, totally defeating the isolation.

Whaaat!
You sure about that? I don't think the adapter would work if that was the case. Before opening it, did you check the resistance between its pins on the primary side and secondary to confirm that there is indeed a connection between the two?

- Output filtering capacitors had fake vents, they were ground into the case by hand

Well, what do you expect? They even spelled vent ("VEHT") wrong... unless you read the "H" like you would in the Cyrillic alphabet (in which case, "H" in Cyrillic is equivalent to "N" in Latin).

- The Y capacitor (blue one for suppression) is fake, it's much thinner than real ones

Of course! This is the minimum "standard" for fake/low-end adapters and power supplies.

Worse than "toaster in the tub." At least with THAT, you know it's 120V.

Not only that.

Even the cheap "cup water heaters" with exposed elements are safer... because again, you know it's 120V/240V line voltage and not to be toyed with.

the point of showing this, is that you cant judge quality by price.

+1

There are far too many fakes being sold for a higher price to make you think you are getting the real thing or better quality.

I was looking for washing machine bearings yesterday, and after finding kits for $25 to $100, at the end I concluded that it probably didn't matter if I had gotten the most expensive ones, because they could have well been fakes (they were supposedly some high quality Japanese brand). So I went with the most bought ones / highest reviewed ones, instead, which were $30.

Like you said, price doesn't mean anything... unless you know the supplier.