A few days ago, we were invited by Cherry Mobile to check out their partner manufacturers of their accessories such as the charger and batteries at Shenzen, China. Actually, it was the first time that we get to see a manufacturing of accessories of a smartphone because normally, companies would be secretive about how their accessories are made.
First, we went to Qian An Electronics Co. at Shenzen, this company is behind the different chargers for Cherry Mobile devices. They create chargers with different output for different devices. Normally, bigger and more powerful devices such as tablets ask for more power which is why they require chargers that can give bigger amperes. Also, the bigger the amperes that the charger has, the faster the smartphone/tablet can be charged.
At Qing An Electronics, we witnessed how the chargers of Cherry Mobile are made. And no, Cherry Mobile accessories might be affordable but that doesn’t mean their manufacturing is of subpar quality. Actually, their manufacturing was pretty good.
They also have an R&D in where they test out the chargers that they made. They pick some units in the production and then they are tested randomly. They test the chargers if they are working and if the right voltages and amperes are being produced in the chargers. In this lab, we were also able to compare the original chargers made by Qian An Electronics Co. for Cherry Mobile and some fake chargers that are using the name of Cherry Mobile.
These fake chargers which are normally bought in sidewalks and Quiapo produce less than the promised output which may give you longer charging time and worse, it might even break your device.
So how are the chargers of Cherry Mobile are made? First, the tiny components such as small ICs are soldered to the PCB by a machine which is good because it will be really hard and more prone to errors if this will be done on manual labor. The soldering is accurate and precise and it is lead-free thanks to the machine that they’re using.
I’ve checked the different boards and not only that the soldering board are good but the components that are used are in a good quality too. After the machine has soldered the components on the board, the manual labor takes place and the bigger components are glued and soldered on the board.
After the soldering of components by man and machine, the boards are checked for the nth time, cut individually and placed into a case then sealed. Yes, those boards inside your chargers are passed on to a lot of quality testing before it even reaches the part in where the board is placed inside the case.
But that doesn’t stop there because these chargers that are created at Qian An Electronics Co. are tested again by plugging then into outlets and are being exposed for two hours. If the chargers fail, they’ll be subjected to testing again and they’ll figure out the issue to be fixed.
Not only they’ve shown us how good their chargers are compared to fake ones but they also showed us the difference between the original cables and the fake ones. The original cables have thicker strands and stronger cables while the fake ones are the opposite. For the plugs, fake chargers use metal alloys while the original ones are made from Copper.
So why is it important to have a better cable and plugs? Well, having a better cable means that transferring of data is faster and it less prone to breakage while having metal alloys on the plugs will be prone to electric shock which might damage the charger and the device. Actually, it’s very easy to know if your chargers are fake, just bring out a magnet and if it sticks to the plug then the plugs are using metal alloy.
One thing that I really like about how Qian An Electronics Co. is that every charger was carefully being tested and it passes at a lot of QA. In my years of use of different Cherry Mobile devices, I’ve never experienced broken chargers and cables out of the box and I’ve never had any broken chargers and cables from Cherry Mobile.
This trip showed us that the quality of Cherry Mobile chargers aren’t cheapo and if you’re planning on buying one, be sure that you buy the original one whatever the brand is because who knows, those fake chargers that you are buying really have a subpar quality.
In our next post, we’ll discuss and torture original and fake Cherry Mobile batteries. So stay tune.
They should spend less money sending people to China and more money hiring staff to offer some customer support. No reply to emails, twitter or Facebook for problems with their crappy white label chinese products.