Car Chargers and the HTC One

I am seeing a lot of people complaining that their HTC One is losing charge while driving using GPS and Blue Tooth streaming.

A couple of important things to consider when charging using a car charger -

One - The charger must be able to provide a true 1A to the phone.  Some chargers rated 1A do not truly supply 1A so make sure you find one that does -

Two- when you use a USB cable to charge your Android phone you must have a dedicated charging cable.  Cables that are used for syncing or data transfer have a different configuration which tells the Android to limit draw to 500mA or 1/2 A.  A simple test is to connect the phone to your computer with the cable.  If the computer recognizes the phone and allows you to transfer data, the phone will throttle back charging to maximum of 500mA.

There are also apps that can tell you what kind of charge your phone is drawing - example this one -

Battery Ap by MacroPinch a screenshot of which is shown above.  When charging under the USB Data protocol, the app will show "USB" under the battery as shown above.

If you have a proper charging cable for your car charger, "AC" will be indicated, and the charge rate will be much faster.

Here is an example of a charge only cable at Amazon
Charging Cable

So, if you are frustrated with the charge rate from your car charger, check the output of your charger and don't forget your usb cord.