Car Dock and Overheating??

[rusray]

my phone did this on a two hour car trip. I had forgotten my car gps, so defaulted to my droid. after an hour I took it off my dash (currently using a generic dash mount and car charger) to get a closer look at the map and damn near burned my hand. it was HOT and not charging at all

I unplugged my phone and put it on my ac vent, lol. the rest of the trip I just alternated plugging and cooling.
obviously using 3G and gps the phone is going to heat a little, add in the sunlight filtering in and the battery heating due to charging and it seems problematic.

I'm wondering if a charger that charges slower would help?

 

[must_i_register]

I have gone on a 450 mile road-trip with the Droid as my nav & ran it with an aftermarket charger (one of the retractable ones) and noticed that the Droid was warm but not fully charging. It was 40ish out and this was odd. Plugged it in with the real charger and it charged right up while still running the nav with photo overlay.

I have the Motorola cradle mounted up by the rear view mirror and behind a tint strip. The Droid is not in full sun. I find this works better for line of sight and for not getting the Droid screen washed out by the bright sun here in South Florida. Have not experienced it get hot and shutting down but believe this is due to it being kept from direct sun exposure.

 

[Dxun]

Well i just bought a Vent Mount from Best Buy for 20 Bux and tested it here in the AZ sun. Right now its 85 degrees out and with GPS and Slacker Radio running it stayed at about 90 degrees F. Im rooted and overclocked, but when plugged into charger i run at 550mhz.

Going to Vegas Tuesday so i'll really get to test if the AC vent keeps this thing cool enough to run down the road with. So far after 1 hour of testing im happy with the turnout.

 

[must_i_register]

Well i just bought a Vent Mount from Best Buy for 20 Bux and tested it here in the AZ sun. Right now its 85 degrees out and with GPS and Slacker Radio running it stayed at about 90 degrees F. Im rooted and overclocked, but when plugged into charger i run at 550mhz.

I've never liked the vent mounts - it is too hot down here (about 60 miles from Cuba) to have the AC partially blocked. Was always afraid they would break the vents too. Good luck with your trip - hopefully it'll work for you.

BTW, am totally stock - no root, just factory settings.

 

[pilot25]

What chargers are you guys using? I bought the OEM Moto charger and after a while it stopped charging the phone. It lights up blue but when I stick it in phone the charger turns off. I thought maybe I blew it out by plugging in the phone first then starting the car up. It worked for 3 months fine then just stopped charging yet still lighting up when not plugged into the phone.

I bought a rocketfish Best Buy one and it charges fine. Doesn't say rapid charger on it and appears to charge at the same pace as the OEM model. I think this might be a contributing factor. The plot is thickening here.

 

[nateccnn]

If you battery is below 100% then the phone will want to charge it. This creates heat.

If the GPS is running...this creates heat.


If the sun is shinning directly on it...especially if the dash is black...this creates heat.

The Droid sense too much heat and it reduces heat by turning off the battery charging circuit. This is a protection so you don't blow the thing up.

You can control the heat by doing one of the following. Turn off the GPS...charge the battery before turning on the GPS...remove from direct sunlight.

It seems impractical to charge the phone to 100% before turning on the GPS feature. But it would help a lot. And you can always use the GPS in direct sunlight...just don't expect to charge while doing so.

Nate

 

[pilot25]

Drove with it again today (30 minutes) with a full 100% charge and using maps. It hit 120F in about 15 minutes and started discharging. Pulled it off the dash and it dropped to 118F and started charging again. So 120F is the max. temp. to keep charging. After parking and being out of the car the temp. went down to 97F for about an hour. I got back in the car and kept it out of the sunlight and it peaked at 102F charging from 90%. Ran all the same apps in and out of the sun. Stayed at 102F for 30 minutes out of the sunlight.

So the verdict is the thing can't do summer sunlight. F-ing annoying. So now I need to buy ANOTHER mount so I can use it in the summer. These are the things that I can't take about the Droid. These small things that the Moto engineers should be thinking of.

 

[Blitz]

Just got caught up on this thread. Having the same problem. I have the Motorola Car Mount + Car Charger. The battery life on this phone is nowhere near good enough to last a nice long drive with the GPS on, and to have to take it off of my dash for it to charge?

Also, my phone acknowledges that the charger is plugged in, and even says that it's charging even though it's not. Yes, it gets hot, but not that hot. I'd say it hit about 110-120 to the touch (yes, I can tell this just by touching it...). I find it ridiculous that the phone heats like that and stops charging. It took me forever and a day to find a place on my dash that it will work (and I still don't like where it is because it rattles) because if I have it on the windshield, I won't be able to reach it (I drive an 8th gen Civic).

I gave my old GPS to my sister saying that I don't need it since I have this phone, but if I can't use it when it's hot, it's completely useless to me. Yes, I can let it run GPS on battery, but I doubt the battery will last long enough for me with all of my travels, especially since I only really charge my phone in my car...

 

[rjsurfer]

Mine doing the same thing when hot, charging stops when running GPS.

This could be a big problem for me....I'm going to move the unit out of the direct sunlight as a fix.

Ron W.

 

[thaJack]

Glad to know it is not just me. It does that on both my droid and my wife's.

I noticed it the first weekend I had it and Verizon Wireless told me it was the fault of my T-Mobile charger I was using in the car. It wasn't, but you can't sit there and argue with them when they claim that there isn't a standard micro-USB cable.

It will charge all the way up, stay there for a while, and then begin to drain. If you look at the battery status, though, it indicates that it is charging.

I know some have claimed that it is not just Google Maps, but I've never noticed it with anything else.

I ran Waze all the way to Florida one day (10+ hours) and it did not do it.

 

[rjax]

Yeah, I'm one of those who had charging shut off even without running Maps.

One thing to keep in mind, it's possible to lose battery charge while plugged even if the overheating is not an issue, though this will probably only happen if you have GPS going with the screen on all the time. The real sign of of overheating is if you know have everything set hooked up to charge, you have 90% or less battery left, but you don't see the notification battery icon showing charging status.

In response to the earlier question to what kind of charger I'm using -- I've got this USB Charger plugged into my cigarette lighter, and connect with the stock micro USB cord.

 

[Sal R.]

I noticed this while on a road trip to the desert while my droid was in the car dock mounted on the dash. I turned on the ac set to "defrost" setting and resumed charging like normal.

 

[Murz]

I noticed my phone doing this before the 2.1 update, it still does it now after the update, but I wanted to note that because some people are hinting that this problem may be caused by the recent update. I originally thought it was my Seidio car dock that was the problem, but after reading this thread it seems it’s an issue of running too many apps with the combination of direct sunlight on your dash.

Also one of the posters mentioned that they wanted to get cpu temp readings while in the car. My phone was rooted so I have SetCPU, and can say that normally my phone sits around 27c, but when in the car dock on a long trip with nav and other apps running it easily got up to 45c+.

 

[mrredskin]

electronics do this when exposed to direct sunlight for hours at a time. not sure why it's that hard to figure out. if you've ever had a gps or radar detector, you know not to leave them up when you're away from the car, and that they get extremely hot when exposed on the windshield or dash.

it's not your charger, it's not your dock... it's the climate. if you're on a 4 hour trip you don't need it on your dash for so long, anyway.

 

[ConqSoft]

I have mine mounted down on my console out of the sun using a ProClip. No issues.