Phone uses power faster than charger supplies it

[CliffV]

I was home sick the other day. I played "Jewels Maze" constantly for about 3 hours and my battery ran out. So i plugged the phone into the wall adapter that came with the phone and I still ran out of power. (The screen simply went black.)

The next day I tried an experiment with a newly charged battery and the phone plugged into the charger. I played Jewels Maze for about 4 and a half hours before I ran out of juice.

I guess this all makes sense since it normally takes about 5 hours to fully charge my phone. But this is the first product I've ever owned that wouldn't run forever on the wall adapter.

Thoughts?

 

[Harry2]

With the HTC wall charger your phone (without using) should fully charge in 2.5 hours.
So maybe the wall charger is faulty.

The 'Battery Monitor Widget' on my Sensation shows my the charging and discharging current of the phone in a graph.

An almost empty battery in stand by, the wall charger should charge with up to 800mA - 900mA.

Worth a look could be the discharging current of your game.
So play for a while without charging the phone and look afterward at the current graph.

So you can compare charging and discharging current of the battery.

It's an easy calculation:
If you want to play while charging the charging current have to be bigger than the discharging current.

But playing while charging shouldn't be a problem.
I charge my Sensation successfully in the car while running a very power consuming navigation app

EDIT: Maybe the first step to check the wall charger: The phone should "Charging (AC)", not "Charging (USB)".
To look at > Settings > About phone > Battery > Battery status ...

Charging:
"AC" means up to 1000mA
"USB" means up to 500mA

Harry

 

[CliffV]

The phone is indeed "Charging (AC)".

I have installed "Battery Monitor Widget". I'll post more data once I familiarize myself with the app.

Thanks for the info.

 

[CliffV]

Battery Monitor Widget is certainly nice if one really wants to know what's going on with power consumption. Here's what I found out.

When charging an idle phone with an empty battery, the charging current is 750mA. The charge rate gradually drops once the battery gets almost fully charged. That makes sense. The battery completely charges in 2.5 hours.

When I play Jewels Maze and the phone isn't plugged in, the discharge rate is about -600mA.

When I play Jewels Maze and the phone is plugged in, the discharge rate is about -150mA.

So, I don't understand why the AC charger doesn't keep up.

Other interesting notes on this phone:

• I always run the screen on maximum brightness.
• The battery is a 1900mAh Anker battery.

I suspect there is some flaw in the circuitry that regulates how much current is drawn from the AC adapter.

Oh, well. This is more of a curiosity than anything else. It is still a great phone.

 

[Harry2]

Yes, by calculation you should be able to play Jewels Maze and charge your phone successfully
I don't know why not

It seens the conditions are changed when playing and charging.
Or maybe the Anker battery changes the measurement conditions ...
For curiosity you could repeat the measurement with your HTC battery

Harry

 

[lucas.childers]

Yeah, on AC charging it should be able to keep up, if not I would consider trading it out or something. On USB computer power it would make sense because USB is super low voltage.

 

[shim]

I was home sick the other day. I played "Jewels Maze" constantly for about 3 hours and my battery ran out. So i plugged the phone into the wall adapter that came with the phone and I still ran out of power. (The screen simply went black.)

The next day I tried an experiment with a newly charged battery and the phone plugged into the charger. I played Jewels Maze for about 4 and a half hours before I ran out of juice.

I guess this all makes sense since it normally takes about 5 hours to fully charge my phone. But this is the first product I've ever owned that wouldn't run forever on the wall adapter.

Thoughts?

This was interesting when i read ur post, i ran into the same problem as well except i was charging my phone from 12v source and just listening to my personal music, with the screen off to save battery life, the charge could not keep up, are you kidding me. I'm listening to personal music and 12v cant keep the battery charging at the same time? Ridiculous i must say

 

[Van Horn]

It is really interesting. I am not able to find out some useful infos about the "charging strategy" of HTC and other phones. I would appreciate (as I said once here) a possibility to decide if the phone plugged into the USB/AC should be charged or only supplied without charging.

Something similar as I am used to on my notebook. It can run without battery, only powered by AC adapter. It is good when I want to use it somewhere with AC available. I can use it for many hours without drain the battery by charging-discharging-charging-discharging loop... So when I want to make a long skype call or play 4 hours some "Crazy Maze" or whatever, it would be powered by AC and battery would be used only when the phone is not connected to AC.

And when I want to charge, I simply tap it in the "what to do with the USB connected?"-menu...

Simply - Is there such a trigger which can turn of the charging and use AC only for the supply the phone?? Even if there would be some need to overwrite some config file or whatever...

Thanks.