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Charging battery while using TomTom 6 in the car

Hello everybody,
i wonder if any of you encountered the problem of not charging the battery in the car while using TomTom 6. It happened to me many times and it's quite annoying because at a certain point the phone will go off and it will need to be charged while off otherwise it will not work.
Since it happened in different cars it does not depend by the charger but has to be a software problem either of WM or TomTom.
Any suggestion?
Thanks!
Panco

Buy a decent charger with at least 2A.

2A? 1A should be more than enough...
(I'm not sure you'd be able to find a 2A USB charger as the USB2.0 spec requires connectors to be rated at 1.5A tops so if there was such a beast I personally wouldn't touch it)
Mathew

Do a careful inspection of the USB connector on the phone and the car cradles/leads - my money is on a piece of cloth/fluff etc breaking the charger connection.

Today, I tried using CoPilot (with a live internet connection going for Traffic updates), with bluetooth switched on (so that I could connect with my Parrot kit in the car), and the phone on charge.
On the journey back home, CoPilot was running (and on the screen) whilst I was on a call via the Parrot. And yet, the battery was still getting charged properly! I was actually impressed that the charging would work automatically once the cable was inserted - my MDA Pro needed the display to be off before I could see the red charging light come on and for the phone to start charging.
FYI, the charger was a cigar_lighter_adapter-2-USB_cable type.
I've got an MDA Compact IV with the original ROM (but TouchFlo tweaks, etc).
So, I'd say either there's something wrong with your adapter, cable, or indeed TomTom is using a lot of juice!

panco said:
Hello everybody,
i wonder if any of you encountered the problem of not charging the battery in the car while using TomTom 6. It happened to me many times and it's quite annoying because at a certain point the phone will go off and it will need to be charged while off otherwise it will not work.
Since it happened in different cars it does not depend by the charger but has to be a software problem either of WM or TomTom.
Any suggestion?
Thanks!
Panco
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, it does this with most GPS SW and the problem is heating preventing battery charging to avoid the battery to catch fire, especially with the the phone placed in the windscreen with the sun on it. At night the issue is no longer an issue. So when you have a break for coffee let the phone have a break too to cool down and recharge.

Or mount it infront of an air con vent

Nuri58 said:
No, it does this with most GPS SW and the problem is heating preventing battery charging to avoid the battery to catch fire, especially with the the phone placed in the windscreen with the sun on it. At night the issue is no longer an issue. So when you have a break for coffee let the phone have a break too to cool down and recharge.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank for your post, i think you got the point with something (the heating of the battery+gps) preventing the battery to recharge; i'm convinced of this because the problem is not always present but it comes at certain conditions.
I'll try to let the diamond cool down at regular intervals and not to position too exposed. I also noticed that it's advisable to first connect the phone to the charger then after some minutes run the tomtom otherwise the problem is likely to happen.
Thanks to all.
Panco

There are many tool available to show you the internal temperature of the device - the battery monitor 'Batti' is one such tool (and it's free).
Give something like that a try then you'll be able to see if your problems bear any correlation with temperature.
Mathew

Im experiencing the same with Garmin, yes, it was hot...first I thought the cigarette-to-usb-adapter was not strong enough....
Will try to keep it cool

You need a USB car charger with at least 1A, as said in previous post, but with any USB cable the current limiting will be lways be 500mA.
Only the original Diamond cable will allow you to charge with currents over 500mA. To measure the charge current you can use several programs, like my TodayWarrior (as it is a plugin you will need to disable temporarilt Touch Flo or use Second Today).

It's not heating of battery, but just that when Using tomtom, with backlight, Full GPS usage, phone on and that VGA screen just pulls more than your charger can bring
Got the same issue, and yes, as said before, get a heavier charger.

I have the same problem using IGO8.
First point, using Full GPS in car will consumme a lot of energy.
So it's better to use a 2A/5V charger (5V is the important thing ... And for your information, HTC is selling 2A car charger for their last phones ...)
Second point, the GPS chip is badly placed in the phone, behind the battery.
So yes, when the GPS is used for a long time, it makes the battery hot and the phone stops the battery charging ...
The point is to use a good car craddle, one that lets the phone "breath" (one that doesn't cover to much the rear of the phone) ...

beemerTPPC said:
You need a USB car charger with at least 1A, as said in previous post, but with any USB cable the current limiting will be lways be 500mA.
Only the original Diamond cable will allow you to charge with currents over 500mA. To measure the charge current you can use several programs, like my TodayWarrior (as it is a plugin you will need to disable temporarilt Touch Flo or use Second Today).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The input sideon car chargers inclusive of HTC is 500 mA at 12 V and the output side 1A at 5V, which is what the phone requires and all car chargers I have do. But the important thing about ion-lit batteries is that they require very controlled charging conditions (contrary to the older Metal or Cadnium). E.g. If the battery is completely flat (2 V or below) it is extremely hard to recharge and will require several hours in the charger while building up the voltage to about 3.2V, only then normal charge will start. Sometimes the stand-by consumption of a phone makes it imposible to recharge it while in the phone, and requires an external recharger. This may explain the observatiobn that it is better to wait a couple of minutes before starting TT after connecting to the recharger to ensure correct initial charging.
Riel said:
It's not heating of battery, but just that when Using tomtom, with backlight, Full GPS usage, phone on and that VGA screen just pulls more than your charger can bring
Got the same issue, and yes, as said before, get a heavier charger.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is the way to get a battery to explode, but fortunately the phone will not allow charging to take place and adding more amps will possibly increase heating and just worsen the situation. But correct as more power the device draws as hotter it gets and as sooner charging stops.
As Nani says there is an element of disign problem (cannot be a surprice to HTC that people actually will like to use the Navigation also on long drives), so if placed so it can cool will defenetly help. So will dimming the display to the minimum.

TYTN 2 won't turn on

Sorry this was previously posted in the wrong forum, mis described as a tytn!
My son is unable to turn his tytn2 on, I think the battery has run down completely, as when I turn it on, I get the "smart mobilty" flash screen with the RGB data, then it turns off as if completely flat, when I plug the charger in, the led charging lighton the top of the phone does not light. At the moment I have tried removing the battery for a while to see of that "resets" it, I have also tried soft reseting but no joy yet.
Doing a bit of research, it looks like the fuse may have blown, I have emailed a repair company who have quoted £40+vat + £6 postage each way, which works out at £58, is the fuse the likely cause, could I get fixed anywhere else, looking on the htc manuals it would appear to definitely not be a diy fix (not for me anyway!)

Try charging from the USB cable plugged into a PC
Apk1 said:
I think the battery has run down completely, as when I turn it on, I get the "smart mobilty" flash screen with the RGB data, then it turns off as if completely flat, when I plug the charger in, the led charging lighton the top of the phone does not light. At the moment I have tried removing the battery for a while to see of that "resets" it, I have also tried soft reseting but no joy yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sounds very familiar so far... no blown fuse involved here however, it was a blown HTC supplied original mains power supply unit in my case - the light on the power supply stopped working also. Although I could have had this replaced for free under warranty, I didn't want another of the same type (which is all HTC said they'd provide), so I splashed out on an £8.99 Power Supply from a company based in Aylesbury. It has a shiny black plastic case (nicely matching the TyTN II case), works at both 110 and 230 Volts and came with 4 interchangable mains socket adapters for use with different mains sockets around the world. Before you rush out to get another PSU however, check if the light on the power supply still works. Will the phone charge if you connect it to a PC via the USB cable and does the phone light come on in this case (note that the phone doesn't need to be powered on to charge the battery this way, as long as the PC it's connected to is up and running)? If not, you may have a damaged USB port on the TyTN II and although this can be repaired, if it's out of warranty, a repair centre would need to do the work if you're not handy with that sort of thing. HTC have a repair depot in Kingston, Milton Keynes that should be able to do this sort of thing. Depending how your results go with the above tests, you could give them a call, the number is in your manual.

I have tried 2 chargers + the usb, no lights on phone, if I plug in my TP2 it charges correctly, so I think the fault is with the phone, it is now getting as far as the windows screen then dying (presumably after standing for a day or so the battery has recovered enough to go a little further) so the fault would appear to be somewhere in the charging circuit.

Options, options
Apk1 said:
the fault would appear to be somewhere in the charging circuit.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which includes the USB port on the bottom of the phone. Have a careful look for any bent or broken pins there. It's also worth searching here on xda-dev for broken Kaiser USB port threads because this is a topic which has been posted about many times.
If you don't want the expense of getting the phone repaired and can make do without a working USB charging port, you can always buy a Kaiser charging cradle that comes with an additional battery bay to use as a spare charger then just use the battery bay to charge a spare battery and swap them over when reqd. You could also use bluetooth for Activesyncing (buying a bluetooth dongle for the pc to be synched with if needed).

My sons 8925 did the same thing.. and even though his USB looked to be "perfect" it was the problem... It stopped taking a charge from it.. out "work around" involved ordering one of those phone docking stands which had a seperate battery charger and an extra battery or 2.. Then he just had to swap batteries when one died and charge it in the stand.. We did a 3 battery... 1 for in the phone, one for in his wallet so he had one to swap anywhere, and 1 for in the charger.. it worked well (and he is a heavy user of the Wifi and GPS and such)..I hope this helps you out!

How to power without battery?

Hi,
I have a kaiser with either a mainboard/usb fault. HTC wanted £250 to fix, so a repair is out of the question.
If I charge the battery on another Kaiser and stick it in my faulty one then my faulty one works fine for a few hours (it discharges more rapidly than it should - I assume due to the fault, but works for probably 4 hours) there is no way of charging via the faulty phone mini usb connector (it lights up amber but doesn't charge, nor does the USB connection hook onto the computer).
Luckily I had hardspl on the phone from new and can easily update via the uSD card if any need.
My questions are these: How can I hard wire my kaiser to a power supply so that I can leave it on in my car at all times? (it doesn't need to be moved)
The battery is 4.2v, can I hook a 5v supply onto the 2 outer pins?
What are the other 2 pins for?
Do I need to connect the 4 copper pads in the battery compartment together?
Thanks for any help that you guys can give!

http://www.mikechannon.net/page1.html
check out the service manual

Hi,
Thanks for that, I scoured through the service manual but I couldn't find anything about the voltages on the battery compartment terminals and therefore how to hotwire power straight into them, I don't know much about this and didn't want to screw it up worse than it already is by sticking 5volts onto them. Looking at the markings on the battery power to the outer 2 terminals would do it but i'm sure there's more to it than that.
Dan.

Many angles to this.
Battery is 3.7 volts. You'd want to supply that. But there is a battery charging circuit inside the phone. How that will effect things? I don't know.
There is a circuit in the battery that gives you battery % I believe. Unless you feel like reverse engineering that, you're in a tight spot.
I'd say save your cash, and buy a new phone. this probably won't end well.

on second thought. If you're already willing to hardwire contacts, why not just hardwire 5V to the USB pins?
Keep your battery in there and you'll have 5V on the usb port keeping everything happy

Hmmmn, you might be on to something with that, the problem with the phone is that it doesn't charge when hooked up. The power light glows amber but it actually makes the phone DISCHARGE faster than when not connected. Once the battery gets completely drained all I get is a RED led.
When I sent it back to HTC they said water damage right away. I know for a fact that it hadn't been wet in more than 2 months (it did get wet but only a few raindrops, just enough I guess to wet a detector strip) from when this fault occurred so perhaps it's not a mainboard fault and is in fact the USB connector failure another thread is referring to....Hmmmm.
Gonna give it a bit of thought and then either get the soldering iron out or just bang it on ebay for spares. Should think the screen assembly would be worth a fair bit!

Perhaps I misunderstood.
If you're getting the magical amber LED while the USB is plugged in, I'll say you have a good connection. I wouldn't screw with any soldering. It does sound like you have a short somewhere.
I only had my phone drain faster than it could charge when I setup a bittorrent client on my phone. Got warm!
Inspecting the board for damage might be the best choice. I've seen a motherboard on a laptop that went out with visible water damage. I scraped off an area with "ick" on it that was shorting out two contacts.
If you can't solve it that way, I'd try to disable 3G/bluetooth/wifi and see how low you can get your power consumption.

[Q] On charge - but battery still depleting?

Hi guys,
I wanted to use my NexusS in the car. I have a 3rd party cigarette lighter to USB which I put a mini to micro adapter on.
The phone does two strange things...
Firstly the screen will not go off - it won't time out and if I switch it off it switches itself right back on again.
Secondly, even though it says it is charging the battery life depleted - and fast too. I watched it loose 10% of its charge in around 10 minutes.
Any ideas - is it just a rubbish USB adapter (worked fine with my other phones, most were HTC).
Anyone else seen this - and fixed it?
/R

try a different charger. If issue stops, you've got your answer

Try a name brand (not cheap or generic) cigarette lighter plug that has a USB female on the other end. You could use the supplied usb data cable that came with the phone for charging (that's just about all it's good for). It's a straight cable so it won't be pulling on the phone when it's charging and if you're using it (if the cable is long enough) I hate coiled cables with a passion! Yeah it might be six feet long if you stretch it out but it will always be pulling the phone if you use it while charging.
Some cables aren't wired inside like a standard usb cable is. Lg is notorious for that. Some of their older phones refused to charge if you tried to use a standard usb cable. For a good data cable, that isn't cheap quality, I suggest the sprint usb data cable that the corporate stores sell. It's built good and has a solid connection. A less expensive one is an ultra brand usb to micro usb cable that you can find at compusa. The six foot one is perfect. Yes you can find others online cheaper of course, but as a local solution, you should be able to find these stores. I don't know the quality of any that might be sold at best buy or your cell phone company. Generally from what i've seen, the cell phone stores that have lots of generic accessories, have dummy phones or all their phones in a glass display case are the places that will probably have low quality cables. Some people don't care about stuff like that and some run into problems with flashing or being detected correctly by the computer or the plugs wiggling in the sockets and possibly causing intermittent connections. See where I'm going with this? Imagine you are flashing and halfway through it or at a critical point of data transfer. The plug connections aren't good or solid because they wiggle. The contacts momentarily lose connection and the data stops... Stuff like this is a bricked phone waiting to happen imo. Both Samsung and HTC cables that were supplied with the phones with my past phones seemed like they weren't very good data cables. Some may have never had a problem with these but I have. Times when phones refused to flash or be detected by the host computer, then the problem went away when I used "better" quality cables.
Sorry for my usual rambling when I reply. I like to explain things in a way that a non tech person could begin to understand.
As for your original question, I have experienced this too. Almost always a reboot fixes that problem. A good tool to use for charge and discharge info is a widget called battery monitor widget. I turn the sampling rate faster to like five seconds and the battery capacity to what the battery is actually rated at. The widget always seems to guess the wrong capacity of the battery. You can watch and learn what your phone normally idles at and when something is really sucking a lot of power. On the flip side, it will show you when the battery is trickle or charging it hard. Mine idles at less than ten milliamps and I've seen it charge as much as upper nine hundred milliamps (970's+).
sorry, gotta stop blabbing!

Wrong USB charger Polarity, is phone buggered?

So i was soldering up a extra long micro usb cable to the other day to power a cheap ip cam i had. Being the lazy git i am i didnt bother to check the polarity with my meter when finished but just blindly trusted the embossed + and - symbols that were on the micro usb plug i used. Tested it on my ipcam and it didnt work (didnt break it either considering its cheap nasty chinese trash) so lazily got a second opinion from the closest thing to hand (my z3 compact) and now its acting kind of broken. The cable did indeed have reverse polarity
Ive had the phone 2 years and its always been very reliable. The phone instantly went off and would only come back on again with power/volume up. When its on it works perfectly, no glitches or anything and seems to charge/discharge fine but will randomly reboot quite often now and battery charge will suddenly disappear. was just looking for an opinion on how buggered it is from someone in the know. Could it just be the battery buggered, is it worth trying to fix?
For the sake of £5 ive ordered a replacment battery and will hope for some luck.
Many thanks.

Looks like i overreacted. Did a fresh install/repair from PC and seems back to its old self so must have been a simple corrupt file/s caused my instant shutdown protecting itself from the cable :/