I often use my phone as a mobile internet hotspot, which is connected via USB to my computer. This works fine, but unless the phone is already fully charged, it starts charging its battery from the notebook, draining the battery of the latter quite quickly. Since it is a USB-C port on both ends, I suspect that the charging current may even exceed 0.5A, leading to a fairly quick discharge of my notebook's battery. I would prefer to completely disable charging of the phone when my notebook itself runs on battery power. A current limit to the USB's minimum 0.1A would also be ok. Entirely disabling the port is not an option, as that would also disable USB tethering.
Question: How can I disable USB charging of a connected device or at least limit the current to 0.1A?
Notebook: Lenovo Thinkpad T480
OS: Ubuntu 20.04
Phone: SHIFT phone, running Android 8, not rooted
Thank you and best regards, Philipp
121 Answer
That is not possible. The function of USB charging is built into the motherboard. You would have to find a way to disable USB charging on the phone's end, but that may require rooting. A viable solution right now would be to use a wireless method to connect to your phone instead.
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