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Help Phone died while plugged into car charger?????

UPS92008

Newbie
I ran up to mammoth for a fishing trip this past weekend. I used my car panel nav mostly as a timer. My evo was plugged into the car charger the whole way up. 5hrs 45 mins. Right around Bishop it died. Wouldnt turn on. Still plugged in the intire time. Battery check showed display was eating batts 70ish%. I guess I thought I was safe with it plugged in. GPS was on.
Still think it kinda sucked that from Carlsbad to mammoth my phone died while being plugged in.

Any thought???? Thanks.... =]
 
I ran up to mammoth for a fishing trip this past weekend. I used my car panel nav mostly as a timer. My evo was plugged into the car charger the whole way up. 5hrs 45 mins. Right around Bishop it died. Wouldnt turn on. Still plugged in the intire time. Battery check showed display was eating batts 70ish%. I guess I thought I was safe with it plugged in. GPS was on.
Still think it kinda sucked that from Carlsbad to mammoth my phone died while being plugged in.

Any thought???? Thanks.... =]

I've also noticed this little gem ever since the GB update. The battery will charge when connected to car power and then just stop. A quick check of the settings menu>battery shows that the battery status is "discharging".....not "Charging (USB)" or "Not Charging", but "Discharging". This is while it is plugged in. Isn't that terrific?

The other beauty that I've noticed is that my battery life is now 1/2 of what it used to be. 18 hours off charger before hitting 30% (or yellow battery status) is what I was getting before. Now, it's 8 hours.
 
Thanks for the info guys.

Orange light was on for 5 hours then the phone beeped that, hey check me out im in the red beep.

Crazy thing is while still plugged in it died. I mean would not turn on. Plugged in and orange light on, nothing, nada, zulch. I dropped in my second batt and she fired back up ready to rock.

I was using a cheapy retactable thin line car charger for the phone and I had the sirius radio and cb radio plugged into the tundra. It was a scene in the cab to say the least. =]
 
Orange light was on for 5 hours then the phone beeped that, hey check me out im in the red beep.

I've had this happen consistently over the past few weeks, only with my car dock though. It charges fine both in my dock at work and on the standard charger at home. I'm using a Seidio dock, and I've done multiple things to find the issue. Both my wife and I have EVO 4g's with Seidio car docks. I swapped my dock for hers, no change. I swapped out the charging cable, no change. I used a different charger, no change. I tried my normal setup on my wife's phone, no change.

If the phone is @ 99%, it will usually make it to 100% and light will go green. Anything less than that, the charging usually stops. The % will not normally drop until you take it off the charger. If I watch the battery icon, I can see when it stops charging. If I unplug and plug back in, it will charge for a few more minutes then stop. When it's removed from the charger, the battery level will drop down within 1-2 minutes.

I don't know what else to do to figure the issue out. I have ordered a new charger that supplies 2.1A, as I've read that a low charger output could be the issue.

I am confused, as this combination has worked fine for about 8 months now. Why all of a sudden is it no longer charging properly? The battery could be the issue, as I know that the chemistry changes over time, but I'd like to know for certain before swapping out the battery.



I also was suspicious of the update, although I can't remember if it started happening before the update or after.

I'm rooted and flashed the stock rooted ROM as soon as it was available. My wife's phone is stock unrooted, with the latest OTA. I've since updated to the MIKG V2.15 ROM on my phone, with no change in the issue. I'd really hate to flash back to Froyo to see if the kernel is the issue :(.

I'd love to hear from others who are having the same issue.
 
As info, the first GB update apparently had a feature that causes batteries to go into discharge more ... the second GB update supposedly fixed this (I've seen "discharge" once or twice since the second update).
 
So if my evo went into a discharge mode????? Am i to believe that navigation ran for 5+ hours off the battery???? That's good right??? =]

BTW. Stock, unrooted evo 4g. =]
 
So if my evo went into a discharge mode????? Am i to believe that navigation ran for 5+ hours off the battery???? That's good right??? =]

BTW. Stock, unrooted evo 4g. =]

5 hours running navigation on battery power only? Yea, not too shabby.

5 hours running navigation on battery power only BECAUSE THE PHONE ISN'T PROPERLY CHARGING DUE TO SOFTWARE MALFUNCTION? Not so good.
 
My battery goes down when in the HTC car dock and Google Navigation is running. I "think" it's working too hard, which causes it to heat up and the temperature sensor makes it stop charging. However, it stays hot and never starts charging on it's own unless I unplug it for a while.

On some trips, I've noticed the orange charge light flashing a few times. What does that mean?

It sucks that I use the phone's GPS to get me somewhere, but then my battery is dead or close to it by the time I get there.
 
I have the saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame problem. My phone, while CHARGING, dies, then just keeps flashing that stupid orange light.... Now it won't turn on. Well, sometimes it does turn on, then it just dies again, WHILE PLUGGED IN, during start-up. And don't recall this happening before the update. I'm about to leave for Europe, where I can't use my phone, so buying a new one just seems silly at this point.
 
My battery goes down when in the HTC car dock and Google Navigation is running. I "think" it's working too hard, which causes it to heat up and the temperature sensor makes it stop charging. However, it stays hot and never starts charging on it's own unless I unplug it for a while.

On some trips, I've noticed the orange charge light flashing a few times. What does that mean?

It sucks that I use the phone's GPS to get me somewhere, but then my battery is dead or close to it by the time I get there.

Ya my evo was way hot when it happened to me. Crazy cause I had the a/c blasting the whole way on my trip. WTF? I passed on a garmin to use my 4g face melter of a phone. Prolly gonna find a navi for the truck now that my 4g battery melter is effin low budget.

I never had phone envy....... till now. :(
 
Ok, So I'm not an expert, but here is what I think is happening:

For some reason in the car charger, the EVO does not go into "Float" mode.

After going through all of the investigations I listed above, I went out and purchased a 2A charger. This changed the behavior slightly. Now when I am charging, it will charge all the way to 100%. The green light will come on and stay on. However, if I leave it on the charger, it will discharge down. When I remove it from the charger, the green LED goes off, and the battery level will immediately drop. For my standard trip to work, it typically will discharge down to about 80% before I place it back on my dock at work.

I've been using Battery Monitor Widget to see the current draw during discharge and charging. It is very clear what is happening.

Previously, the EVO was overheating during charging. This would stop the charging cycle, which wouldn't start back up.

This started happening about the same time that Gingerbread came out, so I am guessing that they may have introduced a bug to the charging logic in the Kernel.

I am waiting for the Gingerbread Kernels to be released so I can see if someone may be able to help locate the bug.

I've put together a quick image of the % display and current draw from Batter Monitor Widget to show exactly what is happening.

EVO_BATTERY.JPG


I'd love to know if anyone here has the ability to confirm or correct this issue.
 
So I've been trying to tackle this from any possible angle. As seen above, I've swapped out everything I could to make it work better.

Last night I flashed back to MikFroyo to see if it truly was the GB update that broke this. When I put it in the dock this morning, it charged perfectly. It charged to 100% and then went into the float mode, just as it should. So it definitely was the GB update that caused the issue.

I'm currently trying to work with one of the Dev's on the new kernels to see if they can help find the bug and maybe provide a kernel that eliminates the issue.

Fingers crossed.
 
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