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Phone doesn't charge in car

dorlow

Android Enthusiast
Jan 2, 2014
272
49
Ok, so we just got home from a 10 hour drive. I was driving a U-Haul. The truck had USB ports in it. I plugged into it. About an an hour or two into the trip I noticed the battery was about 50% full. (It was 100% when we left.). I then switched it to a cigarette lighter charger. It shows the voltage on the charger. It had a tad over 14v. Typical... Not low voltage. Well, plugged into the cigarette lighter it kept draining even lower. Then it was drained where it kept rebooting, charging to 1% and rebooting continuously. I then tried charging it with a 20,000 mA charger. It's always worked in the past. It wouldn't charge the phone to where I could turn it on. I had to switch to a TracFone for navigation to get home. The TracFone charged just fine in the truck. The TracFone was about 50% charged. Plugged into the cigarette lighter, it charged to 100% and stayed charged. I was thinking my phone must've just gone defective. But now we're home and I plugged into an outlet and it's charging just fine. So, why will my phone not charge in a car anymore?
 
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Was it the same cable for the car charger and 20 kmA charger?

I've known some USB-C devices where the charging connection becomes looser with time: my Pixel 2 can easily be plugged in but fail to charge unless you wiggle the cable slightly, and if you touch it while charging it can easily lose the connection. It's not a universal problem, as my wife's old HTC One, a very early USB-C phone, never developed such a problem in 5 years, but I have met more than one USB-C device that has done this over time. I would be surprised if the Pixel 5, which can't be more than a year old, has reached that point, but it's a possibility to consider.

That's the only charging issue I've experienced with a Pixel device, so it's the only suggestion I have.
 
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Was it the same cable for the car charger and 20 kmA charger?

I've known some USB-C devices where the charging connection becomes looser with time: my Pixel 2 can easily be plugged in but fail to charge unless you wiggle the cable slightly, and if you touch it while charging it can easily lose the connection. It's not a universal problem, as my wife's old HTC One, a very early USB-C phone, never developed such a problem in 5 years, but I have met more than one USB-C device that has done this over time. I would be surprised if the Pixel 5, which can't be more than a year old, has reached that point, but it's a possibility to consider.

That's the only charging issue I've experienced with a Pixel device, so it's the only suggestion I have.
 
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To be honest, my experience is that the problem develops in the socket rather than the cable. But it would be an unlucky coincidence if you had such a problem with all of the low(er) power chargers and by chance plugged in right with the mains charger, which is why I considered cable first.

A simple test would be to plug into the battery pack, see whether anything happened, and if not see whether reseating the cable in the socket (i.e. wiggling it a little or unplugging and plugging in again) makes any difference. If it doesn't then the problem is probably something else.

I've never seen any setting, even in the developer options, which would affect the charging, so a software problem is unlikely (at least any problem that you can do anything about. If this was the first time you used these power sources after a system update then theoretically it's possible that Google introduced a bug, but I've not seen any reports of such a thing and you'd think it would be spotted fairly quickly).
 
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One reason I make sure to get phones with C port is because they seem to be more resilient from messing up from constant plugging and unplugging. My kids had the mini USB and they'd constantly break because they weren't paying attention when plugging it in. Since I switched them to USB C ports, not one kid has broken the port over a few years.
 
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I like USB-C, but as I say I have known some of them (from more that one manufacturer) to "wear loose" after a few years of constant usage. I am despite this trying to eliminate the last remaining microUSB from my life (my phone, tablet, camera, laptop all use USB-C, so I just have an ancient e-reader still using microUSB).

I've never managed to break a microUSB, but I guess if you insist on pushing when it's the wrong way up you could do it.
 
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FWIW the USB-C on my Huawei Mate 10 has become loose and cables will no longer stay put. I can move the phone slightly and the USB-C plug will fall out. This after three years with daily charging, so it's been plugged/unplugged over a 1000 times.

The phone that replaced it, a Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra, I usually wireless charge that on a pad, and so the USB-C shouldn't wear out at all.

I've never known this happen with mini-USB though
, not on any devices I've had.
 
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Well micro-USB had a couple of little protrusions that act as catches to secure the connector, rather than relying on friction between the connector and the socket. It's quite a robust connector, provided you don't try to force it in the wrong way, but much less flexible in what it can do.

But that doesn't seem to be the problem here. Unfortunately I don't have any other ideas (apart from speculation on some internal fault in the phone, but I'd have thought that a fault that would stop it drawing enough current from a USB socket or battery pack to charge at all would also slow the charging through a mains charger, and no problem has been reported there).
 
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The truck had USB ports in it. I plugged into it.

I then switched it to a cigarette lighter charger.

Were these USB-A ports? If so, those won't rapidly charge a Pixel phone - and, in fact, may not even be able to overcome the high battery drain from keeping the screen on + using GPS + using mobile data, as is common in navigation scenarios. I don't think what you've described indicates any fault with the phone. It's just that navigating is a power hungry task and you weren't feeding it enough power. The voltage as read at the cig lighter adapter doesn't matter; USB-A isn't going to provide more than 5V @ 1A (5W) or so.

You instead need to use a USB-C charger with Power Delivery (PD), which will charge the phone at up to 9V @ 2A (18W).
 
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Actually I've just come across reports of some Pixel 6 and 6 Pro not working with third party chargers. If this is a consequence of a software update then it's not inconceivable that it might affect other devices, though so far there are no reports.
I spend much of my free time on Google's support forums, and it sounds like a lot of those reports were from users using non-PD chargers. Many assumed that the USB-A rapid chargers they'd used with OnePlus or Samsung devices in the past would work fine with the Pixel 6 phones, and they do not. Pixel phones don't support any rapid charging outside of PD and a standard USB-A charger just may not do the trick.
 
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