TomTom / Iphone battery and overheating problems

[iflower3]

tom tom iphone overheating

understand I am running the new tom tom software for iphone

 

[SilverGhost1]

You simply need to plug in your phone before running the App. No over-heating and no worries about battery drain.

 

[HD_Dude]

Charging Troubles with Car Kit

I'm having car kit charging trouble too.

Went on a 350 mile trip, launched the TomTom app on the iPhone, cradled in the Tom Tom iPhone car kit...the charger firmly connected.

(By the way navigation was superb...better than my 910, better than my Nav-Tech Alpine system, better than my Garmin. I also have the traffic add-on, and for one back-up it volunteered a different route, and told me how much time I'd save if I took it. Brilliant.)

When I got to my destination I was surprised to see the battery was only 40%...since it had been plugged into the charger for 7 hours.

On the return, I started at 100% charge, and by hour 5 the phone's battery was completely depleted. Zero. So, obviously, it shut down.

My car's electrical sockets are working perfectly with anything else I use, including a Griffin iPhone charger, and a Mophie Juice Pack Air case. So they're not at fault.

Would a different USB cable, with a higher rating, make the car kit usable?

Thanks

 

[IRGreen]

I don't think the issue with the carkit. I drove from Houston today and utilized TomTom, Navigon, and a tracking App called Glympse on my iPhone to test this issue. The phone was not in the sun, the ambient air temp was 74F. All of the apps eventually made the phone exhibit the issue where the phone would charge for a while (30 minutes to an hour) with the charge percentage gradually rising. Slowly the phone would heat up and the small battery indicator in the top right corner of the screen would change to indicate fully charged (Green battery with a plug icon in it). However the battery percentage gauge would show less than a 100% charge. At this point the phone would slowly begin to discharge while still plugged into the charger. If I unplugged the phone (while still running any of the apps) and held it in front of the AC vent for a few minutes when I plugged the charger in the phone would resume charging until it heated up again. The car charger I was using was a new Griffin car charger for the iPhone/iPad which is rated at 2.1 Amps. So from what I'm seeing I think the iPhone (or at least mine) has a problem cooling itself even when running well within Apple's ambient air temperature specifications.

 

[dhn]

Google 'iphone heating problems' and see lots of hits, especially those that talk about the overheating whenever the gps functionality is being utilized.

 

[IRGreen]

Yes I think Apple is going to have a lot of problems when OS 4 and Multitasking hits the iPhone.

 

[HD_Dude]

I don't think the issue with the carkit. I drove from Houston today and utilized TomTom, Navigon, and a tracking App called Glympse on my iPhone to test this issue. The phone was not in the sun, the ambient air temp was 74F. All of the apps eventually made the phone exhibit the issue where the phone would charge for a while (30 minutes to an hour) with the charge percentage gradually rising. Slowly the phone would heat up and the small battery indicator in the top right corner of the screen would change to indicate fully charged (Green battery with a plug icon in it). However the battery percentage gauge would show less than a 100% charge. At this point the phone would slowly begin to discharge while still plugged into the charger. If I unplugged the phone (while still running any of the apps) and held it in front of the AC vent for a few minutes when I plugged the charger in the phone would resume charging until it heated up again. The car charger I was using was a new Griffin car charger for the iPhone/iPad which is rated at 2.1 Amps. So from what I'm seeing I think the iPhone (or at least mine) has a problem cooling itself even when running well within Apple's ambient air temperature specifications.

Interesting! Thanks for the road test. Yes, I was having problems while my unit was in the sun...And based on your analysis, I agree, it's probably not the car kit.

 

[mikealder]

This heat issue is interesting, I have never had an problem with the iPhone running hot and not charging, but I am in the UK where we don't get really hot days. That said when it does warm up I tend to use the aircon in the car and the iPhone gets the full benefit of the cold air due to where its mounted:



Mike

 

[Evolutionmonkey]

Exactly the same problem here...

Even with the 3gs secure in the tom tom car kit which is powered correctly using the tomtom supplied cable I still get the battery discharging and the device runs very hot.

This is in the UK so weather not really an issue

It almost seems as thought the battery gets so hot that it just stops charging.

Mind you that said, I think that iPhone sw version 3.1.3 has done bad things generally with the devicev running hot and poor battery life!

Cheers

 

[Kolenka]

I've been plagued by this problem myself, where sometimes it will charge, other times it won't, and there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason (at first) except that if it drains, it tends to drain slowly, if it charges, it tends to charge slowly.

Considering the sheer amount of diagnostic tools I've come across in my EE-style work in college, and some of my electronics projects at home, I took a bit of a look at what was going on in terms of power consumption.

Here's what I've noticed:
- A lot of USB chargers are limited to 500mA (which is standard for USB), some will provide more. There are USB chargers now aimed at the iPad that can push 2A over the USB->Dock connector.
- The TomTom charger can provide ~1A with a 200mA buffer in case of small spikes in the current. The official iPhone wall dongle provides 5W or 1A at 5V.
- The TomTom car kit only draws about 600mA peak while plugged in.
- The iPhone, plugged into one of these 2A iPad adapters will draw 900mA to 1A while charging (seems like the 3G/3GS are set to max out at about 5W draw over the dock connector, while the iPad is set to max out at 10W).

So here's what I'm figuring out. The TomTom dock connector only provides 500mA to the phone, and draws about 60-100mA itself for the GPS and Bluetooth.

You load down the phone by turning on the radios (bluetooth, wifi), and turning up the brightness to max, and the phone itself is using more than 500mA while the screen is on (best guess is about 600mA). What this means is that the 500mA isn't even covering the power drain of keeping the screen and radios active while the GPS is running, in addition to the CPU drain of running the GPS app.

The end result is that your battery begins to drain. Turn down the screen brightness, turn off bluetooth and wifi, and watch as it starts charging again, but it is still easily drawing 350-400mA while the screen is on and GPS is running.

The real solution here, IMO, is to allow more current to pass through to the iPhone rather than using the strict 500mA cap. I'm not 100% sure how Apple makes it possible to push a full amp across the dock connector over the USB port, but I'm not sure it is all that complicated. Especially as we start seeing more iPad-friendly chargers, there is less reason to not be able to apply the same tactic to get the car kit actually /charging/ these phones at a good clip (and by good clip, I mean, charging almost as fast as if you plugged it into the wall... on the order of a couple hours).

 

[mvdb66]

No overhating or battery drain

Have an Iphone 3GS, iOS4, TomTom version 1.4.1 which works fantastic using original TomTom carkit for iPhone and supplied 12V GO Car Charger 1.2A. No overheating problems or battery drain.

People without the right gear should switch off the GPS (the module that may get hot) when having reached their destination like this: go to Route Options, Clear Route.

 

[daveoftruro]

Temperature spec

Like previous posts, my 3GS running OS4 gets incredibly hot and I'm concerned this may be shortening product life. Does anyone know whether the iPhone is running within its specified temperature limit?

It seems the cradle really needs a finned heat sink, but that's difficult without affecting radio performance.