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Accessories I recommend this car charger

androy said:
Thanks again. I got my Scosche charger and it works great. Highly recommended.
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I am having the issue mentioned above with the car charger not "keeping" up with the unit using the GPS. Have you tried this charger while running the GPS and other functions?

Thanks!
 
Personally I would recommend going to your local retailer and picking up a car charger there from the Electronics section. I got one at Wal-Mart that lists it being compatible with the original Droid. It was 13 bucks and works perfectly with my X
 
CCCC said:
Interesting find AJ_EVO,

I hear that Costco is giving out a car charger with the droid x (with a few other accessories) but I might have to look into this for the two usb ports.

Thanks!
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I got mine on the 15th at Costco. It came with a car charger, case w/clip, and wired stero headphones w/mic. The car charger works well, and the price was right!
 
jbhumph said:
Personally I would recommend going to your local retailer and picking up a car charger there from the Electronics section. I got one at Wal-Mart that lists it being compatible with the original Droid. It was 13 bucks and works perfectly with my X
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I'm not sure you understand the reason for my thread. Most cell phone car chargers are 500-600mA. The great thing about this charger is that it has TWO 1000mA ports. It will charge your battery even if you are using GPS, pandora, etc. With a 500-600mA charger, the battery will drain faster than it's charging.
 
Ok, I apologize. I didn't understand that. I saw me needing another USB cord to use this one lol but now I get it thank you :)
 
I got my 2.1mA charger thursday night. I don't feel it is any better than the Moto 1000mA charger. In fact since I rooted my phone on thursday I feel like my battery life sucks.

So my phone at best either barely gets a charge or doesn't lose a charge while driving and when in my office or at home while I'm not even using it I am losing juice like there is a hole in the bottom of the thing.

With my Incredible and X the battery use screen seems very inaccurate.
 
kwest12 said:
Is it safe for the phone to charge with a 2.1mA charger?
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Yes. That is the max current that the charger can pass. But it will only pass what is required. So unless there is something wrong with the charging system of the DroidX you should be 100% fine.

(I didn't look to see what the max draw rating of the DroidX is - I doubt there would be a problem even if there was something wrong with the charging system, but full disclosure here).
 
CrabbyPants said:
So I took an 1.5 hour car trip using my droid x while using the following:

Maps navigation
Pandora radio streaming to bluetooth audio in my car
screen at full brightness

So basically the phone was using all radios to MAX capacity. It worked without a hitch, but when I got home my previously fully charged battery was at about half. I was using the motorola car dock with a USB car adapter rated at 5.0v~700mA.

I'm going assume this is not putting out enough power to keep it charged in this scenario. I ordered the Motorola P513 Vehicle Power Adapter MicroUSB Rapid Rate Charger from amazon. Hopefully this has enough amperage to keep up?

It was only like 5 or 6 bucks so if I need something else not a huge deal I guess. Thoughts?
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Update: The moto charger works great at not only keeping up with this load but also charging the battery. For the price on amazon I couldn't be happier!
 
@sic0048, thanks for the info! Good to know.

@CrabbyPants, thanks for letting us know. Now all I need to decide is if I want a dedicated car charger or if my heart is set on a plug with a USB input... It's tough to pass up that dedicate Moto charger w/ the brand name, low price and report of it working well though.... Decisions, decisions lol
 
kwest12 said:
@sic0048, thanks for the info! Good to know.

@CrabbyPants, thanks for letting us know. Now all I need to decide is if I want a dedicated car charger or if my heart is set on a plug with a USB input... It's tough to pass up that dedicate Moto charger w/ the brand name, low price and report of it working well though.... Decisions, decisions lol
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Another nice thing about the moto charger is the coiled cable. This way you don't have any slack to worry about. You do lose the versatility of having a USB plug, but since this replaced my garmin, i have nothing else to plug in to my cig lighter.
 
I had bought this
incase-combo-charger-2.jpg

a couple months back for my Ipod touch, it says on the back the output is 5 vdc 2.1A... that should still be safe for the X right? it has one USB port on the back
 
After figuring out my battery life problems were either an ESPN widget or Google News (neither of which I've needed) my PowerBolt works great now. Not sure if the Motorola charger had the same problem as I wasn't using the Google News widget then.

My one concern is more car related. I bought a charger for each car. My car works fine as when the key is out of the ignition there is no power going to the charger. My wife's crappy saturn always supplies power to the charger when the car is off. You can tell because the chargers have led's on them. How much of a concern is this for the car's battery?
 
@ECFfighter7232, based on the response a user posted above when I asked about potentially harmful charger strengths, it doesn't seem like it should cause a problem. If I were you though I'd PM that user and ask him about it (I'm to lazy to scroll and see who it was).


drhill said:
After figuring out my battery life problems were either an ESPN widget or Google News (neither of which I've needed) my PowerBolt works great now. Not sure if the Motorola charger had the same problem as I wasn't using the Google News widget then.

My one concern is more car related. I bought a charger for each car. My car works fine as when the key is out of the ignition there is no power going to the charger. My wife's crappy saturn always supplies power to the charger when the car is off. You can tell because the chargers have led's on them. How much of a concern is this for the car's battery?
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I would have to imagine that this concern is pretty minimal. You're talking about an extremely large battery charging a much much smaller one. I'm not battery expert but it seems like that wouldn't be an issue. Maybe if you're leaving town for 3 months unplug it though just in case.

Anyone with some actual knowledge of batteries wanna weight in?
 
kwest12 said:
I would have to imagine that this concern is pretty minimal. You're talking about an extremely large battery charging a much much smaller one. I'm not battery expert but it seems like that wouldn't be an issue. Maybe if you're leaving town for 3 months unplug it though just in case.

Anyone with some actual knowledge of batteries wanna weight in?
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I dont know 100% but I would assume your charger staying "powered" with the car off wouldnt draw any more power then an alarm system on the car or your cars clock.
 
kwest12 said:
I would have to imagine that this concern is pretty minimal. You're talking about an extremely large battery charging a much much smaller one. I'm not battery expert but it seems like that wouldn't be an issue. Maybe if you're leaving town for 3 months unplug it though just in case.

Anyone with some actual knowledge of batteries wanna weight in?
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Here's my unofficial and completely unscientific opinion on this:

An average car battery is rated for approximately 100 Amp-hours. Most every model car uses a different battery so this statement may be true, false, or somewhere in between depending on whose car is being considered.

Some chargers, like the cheesy VZW charger that I bought, have a small red LED to show that power is there. That LED probably doesn't draw more than about 20 milli-amps. 20 milli-amps is about 1/50th of an amp. If the battery can support an amp draw of 1 amp for 100 hours then a 20 milli-amp draw should last about 5000 hours before the battery goes south.

If you add the DX to the equation, the battery in the DX says that it's rated for about 1500 milli-amps, that's 1.5 amps. If my math is anywhere near correct the average car battery would support a plugged in DX (assuming no other power draws) with the motor shut off for around 66 hours.
 
AJ_EVO said:
I'm not sure you understand the reason for my thread. Most cell phone car chargers are 500-600mA. The great thing about this charger is that it has TWO 1000mA ports. It will charge your battery even if you are using GPS, pandora, etc. With a 500-600mA charger, the battery will drain faster than it's charging.
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Have you tried using GPS and charging your DX to see if it actually charges? Not calling you a liar, just would like to know for sure before I order it. Thanks for all the info!
 
Martimus said:
I honestly don't think a different charger will make a difference! When the GPS is active it does not look like the phone will charge. In my mind there is some logic that might explain this. The GPS heats up the phone pretty significantly. The effective life span of a battery is reduced by extreme heat. If the battery attempts to charge the phone during a period of high heat it might, over time, compromise the battery.

Whether or not this is, in fact, true I'll leave to someone with more knowledge of such matters. I'm simply taking pot shots in the dark! :D
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Well considering that when you see car mounts, they are usually on the windshield where it can get hot from direct sunlight. The issue could be that it is the GPS as you say, or it could be that it is just the fact that it is sitting in the sunlight, it gets to a certain temp and then shuts off charging. Not sure, mine always looks like it is charging based on the icon in the status bar, but of course it's a cheap Verizon one so it goes nowhere, I assumed because it was probably 500mA charger. Again just taking pot shots here, but I would love to hear if someone used one of these 1A chargers and was using all the bells and whistles and it still charged up.
 
Martimus said:
Here's my unofficial and completely unscientific opinion on this:

An average car battery is rated for approximately 100 Amp-hours. Most every model car uses a different battery so this statement may be true, false, or somewhere in between depending on whose car is being considered.

Some chargers, like the cheesy VZW charger that I bought, have a small red LED to show that power is there. That LED probably doesn't draw more than about 20 milli-amps. 20 milli-amps is about 1/50th of an amp. If the battery can support an amp draw of 1 amp for 100 hours then a 20 milli-amp draw should last about 5000 hours before the battery goes south.

If you add the DX to the equation, the battery in the DX says that it's rated for about 1500 milli-amps, that's 1.5 amps. If my math is anywhere near correct the average car battery would support a plugged in DX (assuming no other power draws) with the motor shut off for around 66 hours.
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Sounds fair. Fortunately I won't be leaving my phone in the car unattended for any amount of time. So it should be fine since the most it is ever not driven is over the weekend.
 
I've been pointing an AC vent up towards the car dock and that has been keep it nice and cool on the back.
 
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