Accessories Droid 2 Car Charging

[dmacbass]

I have the Droid 2 docking station attached to my windshield and I love it to death. However, I ran into the same major problem twice in the past month. It seems that the combination of using Google Navigation for my road trips and potent summer sunshine is too much for my phone to handle. The first time, my phone stopped charging at some point and died completely about 3 hours into the trip. This was in the middle of nowhere so I would have been reduced to asking for directions from locals had my wife not taken over with her Droid X. I got home without using it and it started charging again just fine once I plugged it in at home. But then this past weekend I took a Las Vegas-San Diego trip (5 1/2 hours). The phone lasted almost the whole trip this time before dying the same way. At least this time I was in a major city so I could buy a good old Rand McNally map to get around with. I used the navigator to get home and it had no problem charging the whole way. That was also at night so the heat wasn't an issue. Still it's annoying beyond words that I have this state of the art phone and yet I find myself not being able to use it for summer road trips just because it can't take a little heat. Has anyone else run into this problem? If so, have you figured out how to solve it without throwing out the docking station and keeping the phone in your lap?

 

[Goodspike]

Are you sure you have a good connection at the charger? Are you using a Moto charger plug? I think the furthest I've wandered from home is about 1.5 hours, so I can't say I don't have this problem, but I would first suspect the connection to your charger before I would suspect the phone. Remember it can run for quite some time on battery, so I would also try to pay attention to when it's charging even while it's seemingly working right.

 

[dmacbass]

On the first trip I pulled the phone out of the docking station when I realized what was happening and plugged it directly into the lighter socket. It still wouldn't charge, not until I got it home. On the second trip I had a brand new cord. Process of elimination now points directly at the phone overheating.

 

[NiceGuysFinishLast]

It's not the phone's fault, it's the battery. Once you hit a certain temperature, the battery will start draining faster than it can charge, no matter what. You've got the drain of the GPS receiver, the screen being constantly on, and whatever apps you may be running in the background, all of which can get your phone pretty close to this temperature by themselves, then the bright sunshine, to boot. Your only fix will be to lower the temperature. Move the dock to somewhere in front of an AC vent, or at least out of the sun. You could try underclocking when using GPS, but I doubt it will help too much.

 

[mortonj]

I thought I was the only one with this problem.

What I noticed is that it is not the battery that is getting hot, but the area above it. Sunny days are worse. My battery temp was in the 90's but the area above it was to hot to touch (above 130 F) If I caught it soon enough I could remove the phone from the dock and plug it into the charger and after i cooled a bit it would recharge. The Moto car dock does not allow the back of the phone to cool.

When I get home from this road trip I will spend some quality time with my Dremel tool improving the air flow to the back of the phone.