Battery still discharging when plugged into an external battery charger?!?

[augie0041]

I purchased one of those external AA battery chargers for my Touch Pro. When I plug it into my phone, the lights around the keypad light up indicating it is charging.
I travel alot and need this for my long flights. I had the phone charged at 100% before my flight. I turned on 'Airplane mode' and plugged in my external charger for a few hours until I wanted to play with it on the plane. It was down to 70%!!
I watched a 3 hour divx movie in TCPMP with the brightness as low as possible, volume all the way up (because I had to, it was a plane)and having it plugged into the external charger the whole time. The phone technically never died, but with about 20 minutes left in the movie, I kept on getting the battery low message (which interrupted my movie each time.) It was obvious the external battery charger was doing something...as the second I pulled the plug out, the phone immediately shut off from low battery.
About 30 minutes later, I decided to just try out PocketMusic and listen to some mp3s with the screen off and the battery charger still plugged in. No issues at all, actually after 2 hours of that, my battery was back up to 50% charged.
What is going on?

[spikey]

Originally Posted by augie0041

I purchased one of those external AA battery chargers for my Touch Pro. When I plug it into my phone, the lights around the keypad light up indicating it is charging.
I travel alot and need this for my long flights. I had the phone charged at 100% before my flight. I turned on 'Airplane mode' and plugged in my external charger for a few hours until I wanted to play with it on the plane. It was down to 70%!!
I watched a 3 hour divx movie in TCPMP with the brightness as low as possible, volume all the way up (because I had to, it was a plane)and having it plugged into the external charger the whole time. The phone technically never died, but with about 20 minutes left in the movie, I kept on getting the battery low message (which interrupted my movie each time.) It was obvious the external battery charger was doing something...as the second I pulled the plug out, the phone immediately shut off from low battery.
About 30 minutes later, I decided to just try out PocketMusic and listen to some mp3s with the screen off and the battery charger still plugged in. No issues at all, actually after 2 hours of that, my battery was back up to 50% charged.
What is going on?

When you're watching the movie you're using the screen and using a lot of CPU so the phone gets really hot. Once it's hot, it won't charge the battery anymore basically to prevent the battery from blowing up.
Once the device cools down (Music, Screen Off demands much less power) it began to charge again.

There's nothing wrong with your external battery charger.

[augie0041]

I dont think it was a heat issue as I experience that all the time when making phone calls, and I have pretty much learned to remove the back cover (ugh!) open the keyboard and it lasts as long as I need it. (I had the keyboard open on the plane just in case) But it was not getting hot. I mean, the keypad continued to light up as if it was receiving a charge, I'm guessing it was discharging at a far greater rate than it was receiving a charge from my battery charger.

[spikey]

Originally Posted by augie0041

I dont think it was a heat issue as I experience that all the time when making phone calls, and I have pretty much learned to remove the back cover (ugh!) open the keyboard and it lasts as long as I need it. (I had the keyboard open on the plane just in case) But it was not getting hot. I mean, the keypad continued to light up as if it was receiving a charge, I'm guessing it was discharging at a far greater rate than it was receiving a charge from my battery charger.

That's another possibility, if it outputs the same voltage as USB (500mA) then you might discharge faster than charge.

[Baffles]

Simple, watching movies is a fairly large load on the phone, probably more power than those AA's and that charger can put out. So you get a boost from the AA charger, but it doesn't fully power your phone so the required power has to come from somewhere... your internal battery.

[augie0041]

Is there anything I can do (lower the quality of the video, lower the volume and use an external boost of some sort), i dont know, anything? The AA battery charger was enough when I did the same things on my PPC-6700 in the past, this is a better phone, I should be able to do at least the same with it.
Will reducing the quality of the videos have any effect? That is the only difference, or, is there a way to run TCPMP in a slower mode that doesnt use all 640x480 pixels?

[diomark]

Get this guy - it's awesome (had it on my touch, now on the touch pro) - I use it all the time on my long flights.

http://www.amazon.com/APC-UPB10-Univ...9295760&sr=8-1

-mark

[orlandojumpoff]

maybe lowering the brightness while watching the movie?

[augie0041]

Originally Posted by diomark

Get this guy - it's awesome (had it on my touch, now on the touch pro) - I use it all the time on my long flights.

http://www.amazon.com/APC-UPB10-Univ...9295760&sr=8-1

-mark

Have you tried playing a movie during these long flights? Does the Touch Pro eat up more power than this battery charger can feed it? Can you please test that out one night for me? (I think best way to test it is to start playing a divx movie in TCPMP while the battery is extremely low, will this external battery keep the phone alive long enough to complete the movie?)

[ramiss]

Lowering the brightness and turning off unnecessary radios will help the issue.