My Droid 1 is unresponsive and very slow when even slightly warm, and unusable when hot, even after a full wipe. I suspect the thermal compound on the cpu is worn out or its the cpu itself. Icons on desktop take a minute to display, rotating screen crashes current app, apps load 50% of the time or crash.
Sounds like you are right, that the phone hardware is failing. Might be bad memory. Make sure since its a Droid1 that the SD chip is connecting right, in a clean socket and that its a good SD chip...you might also want to do a Factory Reset and ROM it with Cyanogenmod, before you toss it. Feel free to toss it my way if you decide its just not working reliably anymore
Seems silly I need to convert 12vDC to 110vAC to 5vDC, but if thats what it takes to get it right...
Well, maybe not. If you have a cigarette lighter 12V outlet on your bike, you can get one of the Motorola car charging adapters. It will take the 12V down to a fairly stable 5V all in one step and includes all the cording you need, and it will for sure put out adequate amps to charge your phone, assuming you are not having 12V supply issues with the bike electrical system. I've got one, be sure its a real Motorola one. Mine glows blue with an M in a circle when its working.
I have been looking at this. Seems the max mA Motorola branded charging cable is 850mA, I bought one of thease and whenever I use it my touch screen becomes glitchy (clicking all over, registering multiple clicks for one finger) Hopefully the D3 is better at handling this amount of input miliAmps.
That's thinking about it wrong. The rated mAmps is how much current draw from the phone the adapter can handle without dropping the voltage (+5V) or melting down. You cannot plug you phone into an adapter and the adapter burn your phone out with too many amps, the phone only draws so many amps and if the adapter can handle more, well good. It won't have to, that's all. The adapter will just run cooler and last longer. Can't hurt your phone that way. Cheaper cigarette socket adapters just cannot supply adequate amps to meet the phone's needs, and things get weird when they cannot keep up. With cheaper adapters, the Voltage can vary all over the place under load, and this can cause the phone to act erratic. If the Voltage goes too high over +5V, for example if the adapter is melting down internally, then the phone can be ruined by the over-voltage melting wiring or frying chips in the phone, though Motorola products traditionally have some protections in place...
Another thing - the screen issues you describe sound like they might be due to a condition people have reported with some chargers and docking stations, where the touch-screen sees the charger as GROUND for the touch-screen. I don't understand what's going on there, but it sure is real because I have seen it myself on my Droid3 when using some particular non-standard cable sets. The phone's screen will act really strange, sometimes not working at all, sometimes pushing its own buttons, sometimes turning the phone off and on, and combinations of the above. In my experience, if I try to charge my D3 with a SIIG supplemental battery block's cable plugged into any USB 5V, I get no touch-screen response until I unplug that cable, at which point it all goes back right again. No idea why. I don't understand these touch-screens anyway.
Lastly, if your bike has a voltage regulator in its 12V system, as it almost has to have, it might be worth checking that out to make sure its providing stable 12V. It might be spiking the voltage up and down round 12V and the bike wouldn't much care. Some voltage regulators always do this, others work better, all depends on things like wear and original build quality. Advance Auto's little charging system test computer can check it in a car and print out a spiky graph, for free. Don't know about your bike.
Glenn
