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TBolt discharges while using in car as navi/pandora

When using in car, playing music from Pandora, and using google navigation phone uses more power than what charger can provide. Ive got it on a fast charger, so its supplying more current than a standard one,....its not overheating because when it does the charge light blinks green then red. Screen is on all the time during navigation and set at 30%. Anyone have same experience? My Droid X would keep charging in same situation. This is going down in charge %. I was using das bamf rom, just switched to Perfect Storm 1.2, maybe will make a difference?
Also when plugged in to power its underclocked to 768mhz.

Would switching kernals make a difference?

What is the amp output of your car charger? I'm pretty sure you need at least 1amp to feed this device while using GPS and data. maybe 750ma will do it, but most recent phones, tablets, mifi devices, etc. require at least 1a.

Same thing is happening to me, I dont think the charger puts out enough juice. I've ordered a verizon 2amp dual USB adapter, hopefully it will put out enough to charge the device.

ilogik said:
Same thing is happening to me, I dont think the charger puts out enough juice. I've ordered a verizon 2amp dual USB adapter, hopefully it will put out enough to charge the device.
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This is the charger,..
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Rocketf...&skuId=1114106&st=phone car charger&cp=1&lp=9
Not sure of its output.
Let me know how the 2 amp works for you.

I use the one sold at the Verizon Corp stores and use Pandora daily with no issues when charging.. Chrages up if it was under 100 and stays at 100 when it gets there..

wctaylor79 said:
I use the one sold at the Verizon Corp stores and use Pandora daily with no issues when charging.. Chrages up if it was under 100 and stays at 100 when it gets there..
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But I am using GPS with screen on the whole time, curious if you are too?

Turn your screen off. Navigation and Pandora will keep playing and your battery will slowly charge.
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

I guess your right,...it must be more of a power hog than my X was using the same charger.

I've used Last.fm streaming with GPS navigation and screen on for multiple hours at a time without any battery drain. I don't know what car charger I'm using (an unofficial one that I bought for my Moto Droid), but I've been running the Das Bamf kernels for the most part. Even before I installed any of those kernels I never noticed any battery drain while plugged.

Same problem here.
I have a Belkin micro-charge 1A. Can't use navigation and Pandora without losing charge. I had the same problem with the iPhone before I bought the 1A charger, the 500mah wasn't powerful enough.
And turning off the screen when you're in navigation mode defies the purpose.
Do you turn off the screen of your Garmin or Tomtom while navigating? I didn't think so...
Let us know if a 2A charger does help.
Thanks for the feedback.

I called Rocketfish to try and find out just how much powa the charger I posted earlier put out. They didnt know, lol. They said usually its posted in their system, but that one wasnt.
But, after thinking about it, I had the screen on 100% brightness because of glare I was getting. Will tone it down and went to utkanos kernal and see how that rides out.

You need to get a charger with more power. I got one made for an ipad. It has 2 USB ports. Made by scouche or something like that. Had this issue with multiple chargers even on my droids.

this is completely normal for other phones too, like the nexus one. using NAvigation with the car dock pulls more power than the charger can supply, so the phone slowly drops while charging. not much can be done about it. i bought a 1.3 amp car charger. helps a bit.

Charger died

So my co-worker has an Asus transformer like i do and he is on his 3rd charger for it. So i have been lending him mine while he waits for his new one. So last night he borrowed it and when i went to charge mine it no longer works. Are the chargers really this faulty or could it be his device that is killing the charger?

After charging my tablet for a while or overnight the charger does not work either.
So what I do is either wait it out or throw it in a ziploc bag and toss it in the freezer(I can't remember where I found this tip but it does work).
The charger gets excessively hot after 2 hours of straight charging and as a safety feature I believe it shuts off. Throwing it in the freezer simply resets the charger I believe, and it is only for about 15 minutes.
Sent from my Inspire 4G using XDA Premium App

betadan said:
So my co-worker has an Asus transformer like i do and he is on his 3rd charger for it. So i have been lending him mine while he waits for his new one. So last night he borrowed it and when i went to charge mine it no longer works. Are the chargers really this faulty or could it be his device that is killing the charger?
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They definitely have different versions, the later version 0B-2LF, 0B-3LF (?) are supposed to be less failure prone.
You can always make a Do It Yourself (DIY) charger with a wall charger and USB A Female to 5525 Plug Female Power Adapter.

I’ve got similar experience – when I’ve tried to charge tablet second time after few hours of playing with it, when I’ve plugged charger in, icon didn’t show me expected “charging” icon. At first I’ve thought that was faulty cable but plugged to PC worked fine. Then I’ve found some info that connectors between charger and plug adaptor tend not to have a contact. I’ve taken out plug adaptor and bent slightly those 2 wires on charger, then connected the plug adaptor back. When I’ve plugged it into wall socket – it worked. I’m on 0L-1LF model.

I've encountered this problem too. At first I thought the charger was dead, but when I rebooted the transformer while plugged, it start to charge again. Maybe you should try that.

It probably still charges or has some charge optimization like my Lenovo laptop has. Mine does the same but never any issues.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

ThEiiNoCeNT said:
After charging my tablet for a while or overnight the charger does not work either.
So what I do is either wait it out or throw it in a ziploc bag and toss it in the freezer(I can't remember where I found this tip but it does work).
The charger gets excessively hot after 2 hours of straight charging and as a safety feature I believe it shuts off. Throwing it in the freezer simply resets the charger I believe, and it is only for about 15 minutes.
Sent from my Inspire 4G using XDA Premium App
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I also did have to put my charger in the freezer... for over a month now it's been working fine.
Try it

Elzbieta said:
I also did have to put my charger in the freezer... for over a month now it's been working fine.
Try it
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Another succesful "freezer" here.
To document - My powerstrip turn off with PC and charger is plugged in to it. Tablet was @ < 20% when I put on to charge, not realizing strip was off (company in town so wife wanted it off in case room was needed for kids), got up next morning and now tablet @ < 4%. Took charger and tried multiple outlets and none would charge and charger was not warm. Tablet @ < 4% and now plugged to USB port on laptop (recongized USB Debug and Asus Sync) so it is trickle charging sort of. Search turns up this (and a couple of others) tread. Turned off tablet (to improve trickle charge performance) and waited the 15 minutes. Removed charger from freezer, plugged into wall, plugged in tablet and tablet turned on and now shows as charging.
I assume this is a hardware/software/firmware problem in that the charger is not going to burn itself out trying to push too much voltage and the reduced charge state of tablet is raising resistence and the firmware has a pointer wrong and it needs to be a little colder to be right.
No idea but thanks for the tip.

I got kinda freaked out when my charger didn't work with my tablet last time. I blamed the custom rom since it happened a couple days after I rooted and flashed a custom rom on it, and I never had trouble with stock before. But, it wasn't the charger, since I plugged in the dock and it could charge. So maybe sometimes the tablet doesn't take in a certain amount of voltage or something..? (It was fine after I rebooted.. or update roms, can't remember.)

I once thought that my charger had died but then I tried a hard reset (hold the power button down for 10 seconds) and it started working again. It's worth giving it a go before you go out and buy a new charger.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

betadan said:
So my co-worker has an Asus transformer like i do and he is on his 3rd charger for it. So i have been lending him mine while he waits for his new one. So last night he borrowed it and when i went to charge mine it no longer works. Are the chargers really this faulty or could it be his device that is killing the charger?
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I think there is something off with his TF if it killed 3 or 4 chargers.

My charger died and no amount of putting it in the freezer or anything else would make it work again.
The only thing I did was pull the cable out attach the TF to my laptop and download files to a different Micro SD card I had bought. Plugged it back in and no workie.
Lucky I had bought another charger for a spare and had it to check the cable ..charger and make sure it what part actually wasn't working...and charge my TF.
It's at an ASUS service center hopefully being fixed.
They do go bad. Theres been documented problems with them just like the dock,, and tablet. When your trying to build the cheapest tablet around ...parts and some things provided by other manufactures ( I know Asus doesn't make everything that goes into it) don't always turn out as well as you've planned.

Skyrocket can't function as GPS Navigator?

This weekend I went on a trip and decided to try out using my Skyrocket as a GPS navigator using Google Navigation. I had my phone mounted and plugged in the whole time for about a 2 hour trip. The screen was on the whole time usually at high brightness (it would dim every once in a while.) When I removed my phone from the mount I noticed the power was down to the low 60's, which struck me as slightly odd since it was plugged into the charger the whole time. The next day I tried to use it as a GPS system again, but even as it was plugged in, this time I literally saw the battery gauge draining. When I turned off navigation and the screen the phone would finally start charging.
Is this a common thing or is there an issue with my phone or possibly my charger? Does doing all those things really drain the battery faster than it can charge it? One last note is that I was not in an LTE area during this, or at least not the whole time (I only noticed it was LTE at one time during the trip.) When I saw my battery draining in front of me I definitely was not in an LTE area.

Might be your charger. I'm having no problems using it as my primary driving, hiking and general outdoor GPS unit. When on car charger, it's charging faster then it drains.

I believe my charger is an old Motorola car charger that came with my wife's old dumbphone. It's actually not even a Micro-USB charger, but rather a Mini-USB with an adapter.
This may be a dumb question, but the actual charging port shouldn't be the issue right? I'm assuming those are always the same standard.

Check the car charger amperage output. I have an old car charger to USB that only puts out 750mA and another thats puts out 1A. Anything less than 1A with the navigation running (which means the screen and GPS stay on, of course), and it'll still drain the battery (and even at 1A it may still drain).
I've been putting off getting a powerful enough car charger myself. You'll need one that puts out 1-2A I would think. Most of the common ones off the shelf are 1A or less, and I've heard that some chargers reported max output is not as good as reported.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727

jslanger said:
Check the car charger amperage output. I have an old car charger to USB that only puts out 750mA and another thats puts out 1A. Anything less than 1A with the navigation running (which means the screen and GPS stay on, of course), and it'll still drain the battery (and even at 1A it may still drain).
I've been putting off getting a powerful enough car charger myself. You'll need one that puts out 1-2A I would think. Most of the common ones off the shelf are 1A or less, and I've heard that some chargers reported max output is not as good as reported.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727
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i second this...my phone won't even charge on some wall chargers, unless 700mAh or higher. let alone do any battery heavy functions like GPS. get something with at least 1a output

I'll try swapping the chargers. I have an overpriced AT&T one that I got for free that is collecting dust.

If the charger has 1A output then it should be OK

I'm having the same problem with my Skyrocket and cheapy charger that I bought at Fry's. Use the navigation with screen on and my battery is less than when I plugged it in.
Going to buy this combo 2A and 1A charger.
http://www.amazon.com/GTMax-2-Port-..._1_5?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1329796381&sr=1-5

Its the amount of mah your charger is putting out. Not the phone. The charger is not supplying enough power
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CZ Eddie said:
I'm having the same problem with my Skyrocket and cheapy charger that I bought at Fry's. Use the navigation with screen on and my battery is less than when I plugged it in.
Going to buy this combo 2A and 1A charger.
http://www.amazon.com/GTMax-2-Port-..._1_5?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1329796381&sr=1-5
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When I was looking for a more powerful option, I saw that one on Amazon as well. My only hesitation at buying it was why it was so much cheaper than all comparable options at local stores, or even online...I've heard that the cheapie chargers may not actually output what they say...though for $4 plus shipping, I guess it's not much of a gamble. Let us know how it performs!
P.S.-Pulled up the reviews...not too many positive ones (though 1 or 2 were good): http://www.amazon.com/GTMax-2-Port-...iewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

Its actually more than just the charger output that is a problem. If the center two pins on the USB connection aren't shorted, the phone will treat it as a USB connection to a computer, not an AC connection from the wall, and only draw a max 500mah. I had bought a 1amp and 2 amp charger for my car and would get the same results as the 500. I started to think it was my car limiting my output!
But I then found an article detailing this problem that I've since lost the link to, but the method worked. Pop open the charger and solder the 2 middle connectors together and all is good.
I don't know why the charger manufacturers don't know this... Or maybe this phone is doing something new? Maybe someone makes a USB-> micro USB with the center pair shorted in cable?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using Tapatalk

Just Google "Solder USB Car Charger" and you'll find plenty of tutorials about how to do that. Personally I'd rather just buy one that out of the box works.

Tried out my AT&T charger (which can be found here) and it worked perfectly. Set up the GPS and everything and now it will charge even while doing all that stuff. Thanks for the help

I have the same issue with my SkyRocket. LTE makes no difference. If I'm using Google Navigation or Waze and the Screen is on my charger/phone can't keep up with the battery drain. If I turn the screen off and keep the GPS app running the battery either doesn't drain or doesn't drain as fast.
I've checked my car charger and it's one of those dual usb ones, with a 1 amp port and a 2.1 amp port. It has no indication of which port is which, so I don't know what port I'm using at any particular time. I've tried both and the effects are the same.
Regardless, when the phone is plugged in to that charger the phone reports that it's an AC charger. Supposedly that means I'm getting at least 1 amp, right? So why is 1 amp not enough?
I don't like the car charger you guys suggested because it has the curly cord. I'd rather use a car charger that doesn't come with a cable so I can plug in my own usb cable.
Any suggestions?

Fasttech QI charger A021527514 $35

Ordered 19/2 Arrived 26/2 - 7 days from China / Singapore.
Comes with supplied charger.
Only had it one day.
Takes about twice as long to charge as a normal 2amp pregnant plug.
Looks good

After 2 weeks use
The charger works quite reliably with a TPC case on. The only problem is efficiency.It still takes twice the time to charge, and sometimes excessively long. Last night the phone was at 26% charge, put on mat, went to bed, after 10 hours was only at 76%. A cable charges it from flat in about 2 hours.

where did you buy it from?

toge64 said:
where did you buy it from?
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Fast Tech
Waiting for mine now, ordered on March 2nd...

AW: Fasttech QI charger A021527514 $35
Bought mine from Fast Tech too:
Charging speed is satisfactory but the battery temperature worries me a little...
The back of the device says:
Input: 5V 2A
Output: 5V 1A
And even apart from that it's pretty obvious, that it takes more time to charge wirelessly.
I'll try keeping the temperature lower by adding some sort of distance piece between charger and phone, maybe even charger and table - the little 'feet' on the charger's back are tiny...

Mine also gets much warmer on it than it does on the orb charger from Google/LG. Seems to charge fine though, I just use this one to top the phone off at work because its not secure or reliable enough to trust charging overnight.

How much did you pay for the original orb charger?
Google Play Hardware isn't available in my country

Eiertschik said:
How much did you pay for the original orb charger?
Google Play Hardware isn't available in my country
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Like $70US shipped. Worth every penny to me. It secures the device (I have had no slipping with the 3 Orbs in my house) and charges reliably. To place the phone on it where it wouldn't charge would require it to be placed at a very unstable position that is unnatural.
IT sucks they aren't available but it probably has something to do with regulations in your country on these types of devices. Google probably needs some sort of certification first. Id offer to bootleg one to you but by the time its all said and done it would probably be $100US before it got to you.

I don't think it's because of regulations - no Google hardware has ever been available in Austria. It's just a small european country.
I could wait until it's available in Germany - they got all devices so far.
In the meantime I'll keep testing this Fast Tech charger.
The LEDs are enjoyably dim and it works pretty good.
But sometimes when the phone is at 100% already and it receives a message the charger beeps as if the phone has just been placed on it.
I'll keep investigating
Here's two pictures, display at maximum brightness.

ive got one but i cant connect and use it by any other input eg xbox 360 usb or a standard usb socket only uses adapter included ,I've sent 5 email saying this but they don't understand they keep saying check the charger supplied but that's not the problem,it will not work with any other usb powered input
Sent from my KFOT using xda app-developers app

I also tried using it with another adaptor (5V 1A) - whenever I placed the phone on the charger the right LED that flashes blue when charging turned red and the phone emitted a notification sound.
Using a Samsung Galaxy Note 2's adaptor (5V 2A) works - but only if the phone is placed directly onto the charger - using the adaptor that was shipped with the carger it also works if there's a gap of ~2mm.
Here's another picture of the charger, this time in a well-lit office.

good news and bad news ,good news is they have admitted its doest work on my usb charger or any other one apart ftom a pc or original charger and bad news is there still advertising it as powered from any usb port anywhere
Sent from my KFOT using xda app-developers app

Just found the iluv iPad charger from asda works at £9 saves risking the adapter shame I can't use it with my 360
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app

Could you provide a shop link or something? I can't find anything...
@Topic:
There seem to be multiple discussions regarding this charger: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2074862

http://m.direct.asda.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-ASDA-Site/default/Product-Show?pid=000546056
i tried it works sometimes
s ent from my KFOT using xda app-developers app

Well, after a few weeks my resumeé is: It works - but only kind of...
- It emits lots of heat. It seems to stop charging at 40°C (red fault LED visible). Definitely not the best way to treat your battery.
- It's unreliable. Sometimes it doesn't start charging, sometimes it stops prematurely.
- It beeps.
So if you just want to use it in your office to keep your phone charged with short and sporadic usage periodes in between it should work, if you and your colleagues can stand the beeping each time you place your phone on the charger.
If you plan to use it as overnight charger or when the battery is rather dry, prepare to face disappointment.
But I guess that's all you can expect from a charger half the price of the original one.

Now I've got a new qi charger air box gonna set it up tonite box looks okay and theyvre even sent UK plug adapter looks good fast tech didn't Send one as far as I could tell they really was not bothered with my problems with there charger if you don't like it post it ,if its faulty its at your expense . fingers crossed with the air box one
Sent from my Amazon Kindle Fire2 using xda app-developers app

[Q] About to get my N5, some questions...

So, I'm getting my N5 on Tuesday for my birthday, and I'm just wondering some things...
The first thing, wireless charging - how well does it work? Can I just walk into a room and put the phone down onto the charger and it instantly starts charging as well as it would on AC?
That's another thing - how well does wireless charging work compared to AC charging? All the phones I've had, it if thinks it's USB charging, then it doesn't actually charge (the battery level goes down).
The major question - do any cheaper wireless chargers work? The one on Google Play A. isn't available, and B. costs loads...
Thanks,
Liam

Wireless charging takes more electricity but charges the phone at the same rate as a wired connection. And yes instant charging. Drop it on the pad and forget about it.
Find one with 1A. That'll charge it normally. Any higher is fine. The NX5 takes what it needs.
Don't buy any that's .03A, you'll be waiting for a while for it to charge.
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