This may solve the riddle for whoever is still reading these posts. For the past year and a half I have been charging my RAZR V3m from Verizon with a mini-USB cable, any cable, my digital camera, the USB floppy, etc, I never really checked whether all of them were 4pin or 5pin, so I don't have any further information about that.

So today I come in to work and plug in my cell to the mini usb cable that I have been using for at least 2 months (in this particular PC) and I get the "unauthorized charger" message, I think.. "WTF?" this has been working all along. So I do a little reading in here and a couple of other forums and it dawns on me that I changed me USB port on that I was connecting to recently. I plug in the USB cable to the other port that I was using and voila! the PC recognizes it and loads the drivers, etc etc and now it's charging.

For whatever reason, the 6 USB ports in the back of this PC are split in 2 and 4, on the group of 2 I have a laser printer and on the group of 4 I have a wireless keyboard. Maybe the printer was pulling too much juice for the USB to be able to give it to the phone, and obviously, the wireless keyboard doesn't pull in too much power.

So there it is, if you have a mini-USB cable that is able to provide power to other devices (USB floppy, etc), it should be able to charge your RAZR provided the USB port gives enough power (voltage, amps, whatever it is, i am not an EE). Try different USB ports from your computer, the ones at the back, the front ports and start with a direct connection to the PC instead of using a hub (although an externally powered hub may work too).

I imagine that's where the 5pin USB comes in vs the 4pin, the 4pin sounds like it's 1pair receive and 1pair transmit, so only data comes through, but the 5th wire may provide the electrical.

If you want to get a cheap mini USB cable, try getting a Dell mini USB cable on ebay, they come in 3ft and 5ft, I got a bunch of 3ft at less that $1 each plus shipping and I have one on each laptop bag, one in my car and 2 in the office.

My 2cents, I hope this helps anyone.

Vince