Help Battery drains on car charger

[Yags]

I'm totally in love with my Optimus Elite, but I'm running into one issue:

I often use Navigation while listening to podcasts in the car, and I noticed that even while on the charger, my battery will slowly go down. On a recent 5 hour drive my phone actually rebooted because the battery got too low.

I use a 2 amp car charger specially made for androids, and I've tested on my workbench that my phone is actually pulling 1 amp or 5 watts from that charger while charging. The phone also says that it is in wall charger mode (not usb) under the battery menu. I typically have bluetooth on in case of calls, but turn wifi off in the car. Of course the screen stays on with the navigation.

Is this normal? Is there a setting to allow my phone to pull more juice? Navigating and podcasting are my favorite things to do on this phone, it really bums me out that they might not be possible on long trips.

 

[MSUgEEk]

On first glance at the title I was going to suggest getting one of the 1000mA (1A) chargers, but you have that. Obvious answer, you're using more than 1A while doing all of those tasks. Maybe try turning the screen brightness down. That's the biggest power draw. Other than that, I don't know what else you could do.

How do you listen to the podcasts and such? Are they streaming? Do you use the headphone port to your car's aux in? Bluetooth might use less power than the headphone jack, don't know, don't even know if your car has that capability. Does the screen have to be on the whole time? Typically when navigating, you go through long stretches where you don't need to see the map, just hear the voice guided nav. Turn the screen off and only turn it back on when needed. Try to think of lower power ways to accomplish what you want.

 

[kwknott]

Sounds like the phone is pulling more power than the charger can provide. If you look on charger you should see output info that looks zimilar to 5vdc 700mA. The 2nd number should be as close to 700mA as that is recommended for the Ellite.

The lower you get from 700 the less current the charger provides which will cause phone to pull from battery. The draw gets worse with navigation and streaming since 3g eats atot of power.

I'd try to find a charger as close to 700mA or larger.

 

[MSUgEEk]

Sounds like the phone is pulling more power than the charger can provide. If you look on charger you should see output info that looks zimilar to 5vdc 700mA. The 2nd number should be as close to 700mA as that is recommended for the Ellite.

The lower you get from 700 the less current the charger provides which will cause phone to pull from battery. The draw gets worse with navigation and streaming since 3g eats atot of power.

I'd try to find a charger as close to 700mA or larger.

OP said his charger is a 2A charger. Even said it's providing a full amp to the phone when charging when he measured current on his test bench.

 

[Yags]

I listen to pre-downloaded podcasts on Dogcatcher. I do use a headphone cable to connect to the stereo... I'm not sure if my bluetooth system can be used for music, but It's a good idea.

I hesitate to turn off the screen, because I use a rather complex passcode to turn it back on. I also keep the brightness all the way up because it is often hard to see in the sun. I'll have to watch out for times I can make exceptions.

Does this sound normal for a fully-functional phone? I take it there are no apps to boost charging amps either? (I understand the current is controlled by the phone)

I saw another thread where heat was interrupting charging, so I'll experiment with removing my silicone case too

 

[MSUgEEk]

I listen to pre-downloaded podcasts on Dogcatcher. I do use a headphone cable to connect to the stereo... I'm not sure if my bluetooth system can be used for music, but It's a good idea.

I hesitate to turn off the screen, because I use a rather complex passcode to turn it back on. I also keep the brightness all the way up because it is often hard to see in the sun. I'll have to watch out for times I can make exceptions.

Does this sound normal for a fully-functional phone? I take it there are no apps to boost charging amps either? (I understand the current is controlled by the phone)

I saw another thread where heat was interrupting charging, so I'll experiment with removing my silicone case too

True, heat could be an issue too. To be honest, you're just running a lot of stuff at once that eats up a lot of power. Current draw from a screen at full brightness can easily be at 500 mA if not more. Then you're running GPS, cellular data, and audio on top of that. All the while it's in the sun, inside a case, and charging on top of that. Potential for a lot of heat which could be cutting the charging off like you said.

 

[Murf1]

I have a Motorola car charger (don't know the output). It will charge about ~20% on a half hour drive. However, I'm not using the phone for anything - it is just turned on.

 

[kwknott]

OP said his charger is a 2A charger. Even said it's providing a full amp to the phone when charging when he measured current on his test bench.

Tell me how the H I missed that! My bad

 

[TX-Dennis]

I think keeping the screen on is the main culprit here. The LCD screen eats a lot of power while it's on. Turning it off should allow you to charge the phone while still enjoying the podcasts.

 

[louiedog]

I think keeping the screen on is the main culprit here. The LCD screen eats a lot of power while it's on. Turning it off should allow you to charge the phone while still enjoying the podcasts.

That could be. I was part of a test for a 7" tablet for a couple of months. The company that provided it was paying for the data so I decided to use it as my GPS on a road trip. It was fully charged and I had it plugged into the car but after about 2.5-3 hours of that big screen being on with high brightness it was dead.

 

[Leslie Ann]

Something sounds off to me.
If the phone is actually pulling more than 1 amp, I don't think your battery would last 30 minutes during normal use off the charger. You might need to simply reset your battery stats.

I would check the outlet you are charging from and/or get a different charger or cable, something isn't right.

By the way,
1amp is enough to power an Evo V which has dual cores, a bigger screen (which is a known battery hog), and GPS. All while streaming audio and using navigation with the screen on.

 

[wyliee]

i have been having problems too, no matter what rom i use or if im using overclocked kernal or not. on a wall charger the phone has been getting hot for the past few days, and will die while its charging, all i have been doing is using it for email while it shuts off, and one time while wifi tethering where it got to 57 degrees Celsius. i wonder if the over clocked kernal cooked my phone or something.....?

 

[Leslie Ann]

Possibly.

 

[Ranhead]

I had the "non-charging in the car issue". It ended up being a bad cable. Sometimes it would charge, other times ... not so much.

 

[nugai]

I have the same issue (battery draining while charger plugged in) on an HTC EVO 3D since the carrier upgraded the OS from 3.4 to 4.0.2. The carrier couldn't help and HTC suggested to change the phone, which was 1 day outside of warranty, for $220. To make sure I have no parasitic software in the background, I performed several factory resets, with no change in behavior. I tried multiple chargers, cables, and batteries -- and changed pretty much everything except for the phone itself or the OS, which I cannot downgrade to the previous version.

During trouble shooting, I installed the free Battery Monitor Widget which was very useful (compared to Battery Widget, which is useless) for understanding what was going on and clearly showed discharging of about -80-400 mA with the charger plugged in. The Battery Monitor Widget clearly shows various 'plateaus' of power consumption (one being about -80 mA, the other about -180 mA) when the phone is in sleep mode (with both phone on WiFi on) when the phone is plugged in. Most of the time (but not always), I can force charging by switching WiFi off and setting the phone to Airplane mode, or by rebooting the phone (which I would need to to about every other day without switching to Airplane mode and turning WiFi off). But even then, I rarely get more than +90-100 mA charging current.

While it is possible that there's a problem in the charging circuitry (either because of a HW revision that is incompatible with Android 4.0 or an actual defect), I tend to believe it's a software problem. I'm a former electronics engineer and looked up the schematics and even the specifications of the charging circuit, which uses quite a bit of microcode to function properly -- and I have a hunch that the OS and microcode are not working together optimally. To this day, even using System Tuner with the $3.99 Pro upgrade that gives real-time information, I have not been able to isolate a pattern why the phone sometimes charges and sometimes doesn't.

The solution to the problem, if we want to call it that, is to carry with me additional, charged batteries when I leave the house and an external charger when traveling.