Best Micro-USB Cables

Wherein we help you pick a great Micro-USB cable.

Whether you have a smartphone, tablet or wearable, odds are that you’ve got a Micro-USB cable (or three) laying around. They’re ubiquitous. Just in case you don’t, here are some of our favorites.

• EZOPower Micro-USB cable
• ReTrak Premier Series Retractable Micro-USB cable
• Anker 10-foot Nylon Braided Micro-USB cable
• Anker PowerLine Micro-USB cable
• iXCC Micro-USB cable
• Rampow braided nylon Micro-USB cable

EZOPower Micro-USB cable

If you need a longer yet inexpensive Micro-USB cable, the EZOPower Micro-USB cable works very well.

It’s six feet long, so you have plenty of length to play with, whether you’re charging your phone in your car or at home. With charging speeds of 2.1A, you’ll top up your battery in no time at all.

Additionally, with its data transfer rate of 480Mbps, you can sync music or other files from your computer to your phone in seconds. Grab it in white, green, or orange, starting around $5.

See at Amazon

ReTrak Premier Series Retractable Micro-USB cable

If you’re tired of dealing with messy cables while traveling, the ReTrak Retractable Micro-USB cable may be the one for you.

Available in black in addition to seven bright colors, this Micro-USB cable retracts neatly into a small case — forget about wasting time winding and unwinding cables — a light tug pulls the cable into its casing. When expanded, this Micro-USB cable reaches a length of 3.2 feet in total.

Also, it has a transfer speed of 480Mbps, so you can sync music, pictures, or anything else from your computer to your phone in no time at all. Pricing starts around $8.

See at Amazon

Anker 10-foot Nylon Braided Micro-USB cable

Anker’s 10-foot Nylon Braided Micro-USB cable is a good choice if you have limited power outlets in a large room and you need the reach.

Constructed of braided nylon, this cable is strong, durable, and resists tangling. Anker claims that this cable has a lifespan of more than 4,000 bends, and customer reviews seem to back this up. Its gold-plated connectors aid in resisting corrosion as well.

Another benefit of this cable is that it gives you a 480Mbps data transfer speed, as well as fast charging.

If you want a durable, extra-long Micro-USB cable that’s fast, the Anker 10-foot Nylon Braided Micro-USB cable is the one for you. And it’s only $8.

See at Amazon

Anker PowerLine Micro-USB cable

The Anker PowerLine Micro-USB cable is rated highly by consumers, as well as The Wirecutter, because it is very durable and performs its job well. It’s also rather inexpensive at only $5.

Made of Kevlar — the same stuff that bulletproof vests are made from — this cable isn’t going to fray or otherwise break down any time soon. In fact, Anker boasts that it has a 10,000 bend lifespan, which customer reviews appear to confirm.

Additionally, its heavier-gauge wires are able to charge your device fast.

If you’re looking for an inexpensive Micro-USB cable that will last for years without fraying and coming apart at the ends, the Anker PowerLine Micro-USB cable might be your best choice.

See at Amazon

iXCC Micro-USB cable

iXCC’s Micro-USB cable is the best-selling one on Amazon, with 75% of its 10,461 reviews being 5-star. It comes in 3, 6, and 10 feet, and you can get a 3-pack with all 3 sizes, so you have a cable for all occasions. iXCC claims a lifespan of over 20 thousand bends, and it has a reinforced boot so that you have added strength where it matters most.

If you’re concerned with value and want some durable, reliable Micro-USB cables, then check out a three-pack from iXCC for around $12. Single cables start around $6.

See at Amazon

Rampow braided nylon Micro-USB cable

If you’re looking for a durable option, then braided nylon is the best way to go. It holds up better to bending than rubber cables, and Rampow’s cables feature stainless steel connectors. Braided nylon cables also resist tangling better than other cables, so toss a Rampow cable in your bag as is and don’t worry about pulling out a rat’s nest.

The best part of Rampow’s Micro-USB cable is Rampow’s unconditional lifetime warranty. If anything at all goes wrong with your cable (aside from you cutting it up with scissors), give Rampow a shout and it’ll replace it for you. Comes in space gray or red starting at $8.

See at Amazon

And you?

We’ve laid out our picks for best Micro-USB cables, but how about you? Which Micro-USB cables are you using and why are they awesome? Let us know in the comments below.

Updated August 2017: Removed a discontinued cable and added iXCC’s and Rampow’s options to the list.

From the Editor’s Desk: Fun with HDR+

Port of Pixel camera app to other phones shows Google is still almost unmatched in computational photography.

One of the major trends in smartphones in the past year has been the rise of computational photography — using the vast computing power of modern phones to get better pictures from the tiny lenses and sensors in our devices. However wrong Vic Gundotra was in his recent tirade against Android cameras, he was basically right in saying that improvements in software processing were arguably more important than any recent breakthroughs in phone camera hardware.

The Google Pixel is a great example of this. If you follow this stuff, you know Google’s 2016 handsets as, among other things, phones with famously good cameras. Yet on paper, the Pixels’ cameras are inferior to the HTC 10. The reason we’re still talking about the Pixel cameras a year on, and not HTC’s, is HDR+. This is enabled by default in the Pixel’s camera software, and its history can be traced back to the “GCam” project, which began as Google looked for ways to improve image quality from Glass’s tiny cameras. After years of iterations on Nexus phones, HDR+ is one of the major pillars of the Pixel experience.

And that makes it fascinating to see the results of someone porting it to other Snapdragon 820, 821 and 835 devices. As reported by XDA this past week, forum user B-S-G was able to re-engineer the Android O (developer preview) Google Camera app to any device with the Hexagon 680 ISP — including HDR+.

And the results have been fascinating to see. Having played around with HDR+ on the OnePlus 5, HTC U11 and LG G6 (my GS8, alas, is the Exynos model), I’ve come away convinced that Google’s post-processing is the best out there — though it obviously isn’t perfectly tuned for all phone hardware.

First, a few quicks takeaways:

• The hacked APK doesn’t work reliably on all devices. Of the phones I’ve tried, the U11 has been the most stable, with no crashes so far. It’s been most crashy on the OnePlus 5. (And naturally, you can forget using the secondary lens on dual-camera phones like the OnePlus 5 and G6, nor save to your SD card on any devices.)
• Results vary wildly between devices, and often there isn’t a huge quality difference between the Pixel camera app and the stock camera, particularly in daylight.
• However, where we see the greatest difference is in low-light or very high dynamic range shots.
• Just like it does on the Pixel itself, the HDR+ camera app favors color detail over fine detail, so images often appear softer.
• On the G6, low-light shots are sometimes better, but on other occasions, images appear blown out and noisy.
• In daylight, the OnePlus 5 tends towards overexposing shots when using the Pixel camera app.

Now for the fun bit: Some sample shots to give you an idea of how HDR+ works on the camera hardware of 2017. This isn’t an exhaustive comparison by any means, but the selection of side-by-side comparison shots here is pretty interesting. (Note: I’ve captured many images where the stock camera app and Pixel camera app images are identical, so instead I’m highlighting shots where there is a clear difference between the two.)

HTC U11: A skyline scene at dusk, overlooking Taipei City from Bishanyan Kaizhang Shengwang Temple. The stock camera app image looks about the same as the “HDR+ Auto” from the Pixel camera app, but with HDR+ forced on, the Pixel app produces far more color detail with less noise, though in a softer image overall.

HTC U11: A daylight shot across a suspension bridge. The shot from the HTC app has a small amount of motion blur. Meanwhile, it’s clear the Pixel camera app has kicked HDR+ into high great to bring out more shadow detail in the landscape.

HTC U11: Temple rooftops. The Pixel app gives us a brighter, more vibrant image, though with some halo effects around the edge of the building. The HTC app produces a sharper, but darker image.

HTC U11: Another landscape shot and a similar story. The Pixel camera app does a better job of giving us an evenly-exposed image with less noise.

OnePlus 5: Mobile Nations Editor-at-Very-Large Simon Sage poses in a dark Taipei bar. The Pixel camera gives us a brighter image with more color detail, but struggles to keep the subject in focus. The stock OnePlus camera app produces a darker, but sharper image.

OnePlus 5: Another low-light shot. Unfortunately these two shots aren’t perfectly aligned, nevertheless, you can see the Pixel camera producing a brighter image with more shadow detail, and more color detail in some areas — for example, through the window on the right.

OnePlus 5: A street scene at night. The Pixel camera app has a telltale “HDR+” look to it, with a softness throughout the entire shot. The Pixel app produces an almost blurry image here, but with superior color detail compared to the stock OnePlus camera app. That said, OnePlus’s photo shows more fine detail when cropping in.

OnePlus 5: This shot is typical of the OnePlus 5 using the HDR+ camera app in daylight — a tendency towards overexposure, and a weird checkerboard pattern when you zoom in closely. The stock camera app produces the better photo here.

LG G6: The G6’s HDR+ performance falls broadly in line with the other phones I’ve tested, but this example deserves some special attention. The stock G6 camera app struggles to bring out any shadow detail in this night shot. Meanwhile, the Pixel camera app produces a brighter, but much softer photo.

LG G6: Finally, a full-size crop showing the difference in fine detail and sharpness between the LG and Pixel camera apps.

So there you go, some early findings from using HDR+ on three current, non-Pixel Android phones over the past week or so. (I’ve posted others on Twitter in recent days.) It’s worth remembering that the HDR+ camera app isn’t designed for use with any of the cameras here, so perhaps it’s unsurprising that it seems to work best with the HTC U11 — the phone with camera hardware closest to that of the Pixel.

In most cases, you’re still going to get the best results out of the camera app that ships on your phone. Still, seeing Google’s HDR+ magic running on other hardware is a fascinating, and shows that we’re nowhere near the ceiling in terms of computational photography on phone cameras.

Other odds and ends for a lazy August morning:

• Android 8.0 goes official on Monday, and the name will almost certainly be Oreo, in partnership with Nabisco. Despite attempts to walk back the Google+ snafu which apparently prematurely revealed the name, it seems far more likely that this wasn’t an intentional goof, considering the fallout it was handled. (I can 100% believe that Google itself has forgotten that image filenames are preserved when posting to Google+.)
• Keep it locked to Android Central Dot Com on Monday for some hot launch day content!
• I poked fun at the LG V30 a few days back for basically apeing the GS8’s front design wholesale — which it absolutely does. But hey, it actually looks good, and there are worse places to start. The V30 looks set to be the highlight of the show in terms of Android phone launches at IFA, a big deal for LG.
• I played with the ASUS ZenFone 4 at the Asia-Pacific launch event in Taipei a few days back. They’re nice! (the ZenFone 4 range actually consists of six phones right now.) ASUS’s software is getting better, and the cameras are great. But the external hardware doesn’t particularly stand out next to contemporary flagships particularly the bezel-free kind.
• At the other end of the spectrum, the Essential Phone is extremely interesting to the phone nerd in me, but many of the issues I went over in my previous Editor’s Desk still apply. As a regular consumer, I don’t really have any particular interest in this phone. (Oh hey, camera issues!) Were I a normal person with $700 to put towards a phone, I’d very quickly start to look elsewhere.
• I have a hard time reacting to leaks of the upcoming Sony XZ1 phones with anything but annoyed boredom. Sony has been making basically this exact same phone since 2013’s Xperia Z, almost five years ago.
• IFA is a week and a half away at this point, but the Mobile Nations team will start arriving in Berlin in just over a week. I made a video about what’s coming.
• Oh, and I guess Samsung is also doing a thing on Tuesday.

That’s it for me for a few weeks. Have a great Sunday!

Watch Microsoft’s Gamescom event at 3PM Eastern

Germany’s Gamescom expo may not capture as many eyeballs as E3 does, but it’s still crucial to the gaming industry. The event offers a better look at the titles and hardware that you first saw at E3, not to mention plenty of its own surprises. It’s a particularly big year for Microsoft with the Xbox One X on the horizon… and it wants you to see what the fuss is about. The company is streaming its Gamescom presentation live at 3PM Eastern with promises of games to show and, naturally, news to share. As for what’s on deck? Microsoft hasn’t shown all its cards yet, but there are a few clues as to what could be in store.

Microsoft isn’t shy about acknowledging that the Xbox One X will play a big role in its presentation — a booth tour video reveals as much. However, there have been murmurs of a Project Scorpio Edition Xbox One X that could be announced at the event — it’d be a cosmetic tweak to the One X that would lure in launch day buyers, but that may be all you need to know to get your interest piqued. There are murmurs of a Minecraft-edition Xbox One S, too. The game lineup for the event is still up in the air, but we’re not expecting to hear much about previously promised Age of Empires news at the Xbox event when the real-time strategy game is getting a dedicated event on August 21st.

Source: Mixer, Xbox Wire