Reddit reviews Samsung OEM 3.3-Foot Micro USB Data Cable for the Samsung Galaxy S3 - Non-Retail Packaging - Black

The newest generation Anker 3e (10,000 mAh) actually comes with a pretty decent cable that is reasonably short (long cables annoy me since they just have to go from my back pocket to my phone, which is barely half a meter when I am holding it and walking, and so one meter cables end up dangling and risk catching on things). I have actually tried a bit to figure out where I can buy just this cable (as it does eventually break) and have been unsuccessful. It is a good cable though and supports 2A charging with no issues. In the past I have just thrown out the Anker cables.

I do not care for the monoprice thicker cables. There are plenty of thinner ones that support 2A charging and are much more flexible and thus easier to use. I've discarded most of the monoprice ones I have simply because they were too thick and inflexible.

The best cable I have found is made by samsung. It supports 2A charging, is flexible, lasts a long time, comes in various lengths, and the micro USB connector (that goes into the phone) has just the right amount of feedback as you insert it. Links: [5ft version] [3ft version]

I own three Anker 3E (2 old, one latest gen), a Gorilla 13k mAh (do not like), three Anker 3200 mAh, and two Anker 2600 mAh lipstick batteries (use them with bike). I use these to charge my various devices, plus hotspots and other agents' devices (since someone will inevitably forget a battery). I have spent a long time trying to find the "perfect" cable, and so far certain Samsung-branded ones are the best I've found (that can be bought on the retail market).

A small disclaimer if you buy the cables I linked above: they are often sold by some third party, and they are likely coming from the same factory Samsung uses, but may not be through Samsung. They are inexpensive on Amazon, and the attention to detail in your order will show this... I have ordered 8 of them at one time and had 7 show up being the correct length, one being a wrong length (but still the right brand of cable), and then within a week or so one or two of them died. I have probably bought around 15 of them now, and I've only had two of them die, and only one time had one of the wrong length sent. So my advice is just "buy a few" since they are $4, and consider them disposable.

EDIT: on further consideration, maybe the best gift you could give your partner (or anyone who plays ingress) is a two amp charger, assuming they don't have one. Unlike a cable, where preferences may differ, we all want our phones and batteries to charge fast, and not all chargers are the same. The USB standard is 5V (five volts) and chargers generally follow this (usually between 4.5 and 5.5V), but they output at varying amperages. Voltage multiplied with amperage gives you wattage ("power"). So the amperage is important here. A lot of oem phone chargers will be something like .7A or .8A, and the better ones seem to be around 1.2A. I am basing this off of the 15-20 that I've accumulated and keep in a drawer (never using, but saving for "someday, just in case" because I am a weirdo). There are 2A or 2.1A chargers (I infer 2.1A is the maximum allowable amperage by the USB standard), but almost always they have to be purchased from a third party manufacturer like Anker that is marketing to folks like us. I own a few of these, and would recommend either the Anker one or the HP Touchpad charger, which is one of the few OEM 2A chargers that I've seen. I own two of the latter, one of the former. All work superbly (Touchpad charger also comes with a pretty decent cable that I like only slightly less than the Samsung ones). This is even more important because if you own a big Anker or similar battery, it will take forever to charge at 1A or .8A or whatever the 'random USB charger you have laying around' outputs. The Anker 3E is 10000mAh (the thousands in "10,000" and the "milli" in mAh cancel out), making it 10 amp hour, meaning that if your USB charger outputs at 1A and the battery is dead, it will take 10 hours for a full charge. A 2A charger cuts this to 5 hours. That is a really big difference — one of those means "overnight" to me, and the other means "while I am out playing ingress on my spare battery". In practical terms if you're obsessed with the game, it means things go a lot smoother if you can charge at least 2 devices (e.g. a battery and a phone) at 2A and you have at least 2 batteries. I played this game for several hours a day for months without knowing about 2A charging, and it would have made my life soooo much easier if someone had explained this all to me. It wasn't until I noticed that my phone and Anker battery "seemed to charge a lot faster on my HP Touchpad charger" that I carefully read the fine print on the regular chargers laying around my apartment and then compared those to the googled results for the Touchpad.

Now that I've produced a wall of text, the last thing I'll mention is that several devices on the market have a fast-charging technology built into them. They can go from empty to 60% or 80% charged (or something like this) in a very short time, like 20-30 minutes. When I first heard this I assumed it was some crazy new carbon nanotube technology or whatever, but it turns out they are just cranking up the voltage outside of the USB spec. (Remember the equation for power? Voltage times amperage.) It means producing a "smart" charger that senses a device capable of handling the higher voltage and cranks it up, while delivering a normal (5V) voltage to every other device. (These chargers are typically delivering 15 watts, compared to the 10 watts of a 2A charger, so they are 50% better than the best charger you could previously use — but remember that the charger you've had laying around for 3 generations of phones now and continue to use may only be something like a 4 watt charger, making the fast charging 375% faster). The newly released Motorola Turbo (a Verizon exclusive phone) in the US is advertising this quick charging, but it turns out that a significant number of newer phones have the technology built in and you just need to buy the right charger (around $30 online). If you own a Nexus 6, Note Edge, Note 4, Desire Eye, (newest) Moto X, Z3 (tablet, compact, and regular), Z2 (regular + tablet), HTC ONE M8, or HTC ONE remix, I cannot recommend this enough. Playing ingress near my apartment means I no longer need an Anker with me. I can play for an hour or two, be at half charge on my M8, come home to get warm for a bit (+plug in my phone), and in 20-30 minutes my phone's battery looks like I'd never played any Ingress.