Power/heat problems using GPS w/ Vehicle mount

[LocrianGroove]

I have 2 problems when using GPS with the vehicle mount.

1. The battery charge will diminish even when plugged into a vehicle charger. The use of battery saving practices doesn't help.

2. With the same configuration, using GPS with a vehicle charger, sometimes the phone will overheat and automatically disable charging. Even without sunlight adding heat to the phone.

Is this normal, or is my phone deffective?

 

[immjg]

2. With the same configuration, using GPS with a vehicle charger, sometimes the phone will overheat and automatically disable charging. Even without sunlight adding heat to the phone.

Is this normal, or is my phone deffective?

Mine did the same thing when using the GPS, VERY annoying.

 

[rescueswimmer]

used it for the first time today. Witha the moto 950 mah car charger. Did not notice that it quit charging or anything but after 2 hours I noticed on LTE and GPS I was at 76% when I got out of the car not really sure what the starting number was. Will try it again. Then will try it with lte disabled to see if that helps any.

 

[skathol]

I took my new Droid Charge on a driving vacation the last couple weeks and hit this problem big time. When in the direct sun, this display stays at full brightness. I found that the battery would drain, even though the charger is plugged in! Then when the battery got near empty - I got this warning pop-up that charging was suspended due to overheating.
I was able to work around this problem two ways:
1. The phone was near an A/C vent - I turned the vent downward to blow across the phone.
2. I was often on long stretches of highway - where the next turn guidance might be 20+ minutes away. So I would hit the power button on top of the display to turn it off. then make a mental note of about how long it will be. It turns out the mental note wasn't too important - the navigator was still running and it still gave me the voice prompt well before the next maneuver. So then I just hit the power button to wake the display back up.

One nice feature - I have screen lock enabled on my phone - but if the navigator was running when I turned the screen off - then when I turned it back on, it bypassed the screen lock and went right back into the navigator - so very little distraction to my driving!

Also, with the screen off - the battery was able to recharge - so with this mode of operations (turning off the display for long stretches) I was able to keep the battery at 100%

I'll mention it hear, but it belongs in another topic - I discovered that if I plugged my headset in to listen to audio - while navigating in the car - that I would occationally get a "GPS signal lost" pop-up - and a stall in navigation - it typically would re-sync in about a minute. This only occurs with the headset plugged in.

 

[atheron121]

I have 2 problems when using GPS with the vehicle mount.

1. The battery charge will diminish even when plugged into a vehicle charger. The use of battery saving practices doesn't help.

2. With the same configuration, using GPS with a vehicle charger, sometimes the phone will overheat and automatically disable charging. Even without sunlight adding heat to the phone.

Is this normal, or is my phone deffective?

Try one of these chargers:

Amazon.com: Motorola Vehicle Power Adapter micro-USB Rapid Rate Charger: Cell Phones & Accessories

Also, make sure to plug it into the main car power outlet, not aux one. I had my phone with GPS on for about 3 hours straight, stayed at 100% battery life and no overheating. Plugged it into the aux port, and it went up to 56%, overheated and quit charging. Had to cool it off with AC.