You might have observed that when you touch your phone, tablet or laptop with metallic body, you get a tingly feeling or get a minor electric shock if your feet are wet. That’s because of the leaking alternating current (AC) from your device charger. Usually it’s potential difference is very low and won’t cause any major shock or injury. But still it is not safe to continuously be the part of its circuit because current will keep flowing through metallic cover to your body and then ground.
In European countries where people use standard 2 Pin chargers with no Earthing pin or in America and UK where sometimes earthing pins of plugs or chargers are just made of plastic, you could have this problem while charging and using your gadgets. This problem can be fully resolved.
Fix:
1- Get Earth/Ground wiring done in your home and use chargers that got earthing pin.
2- If you already have got earth wiring at home but your charger does not have earthing pin or its made of plastic then you can still earth your gadgets. Get a piece of wire and put it in Earthing hole of power socket. Be careful and never to insert it in phase (L) and not even in neutral (N) because neutral can also have stray voltage. Connect other end of that wire with your phone, tablet or other electronics devices metallic body. You may use a tape to keep wire attached. This way leaking current will flow to the ground safely and you won’t get electric shock or have tingly feeling anymore while charging and using your device simultaneously.
3- If your charger does not have earthing pin then get a new charger with this pin or you can follow the procedure above to manually earth your device.
4- Sometimes laptop chargers come with removable cables that do not have earthing pin in their plugs. You can simply get a new cable that has got earthing pin in it.
Simeon Christian
my phone gives me a mild shock, when I taste the back panel with my tongue, my phone charger too does the same, but my worries is that can it damage my phone’s hard ware or soft ware
Talal A.
It will damage your taste buds.
By the way it’s the stray voltage in your phone’s metallic back panel and charger. It’s not dangerous but proper earthing can fix this issue.