motorola car dock

[jon.ritter]

I've been using my droids navigation pretty frequently but the phone is mounted in direct sunlight and get very hot. Should I be concerned about that?

 

[jhhoffma]

Only if the battery temp gets above 50C.

Though it's pretty normal for the phone to get hot using the GPS and radio (probably music too for most people) while sitting on a really hot dash in the baking sun, with no airflow around it.

 

[christim]

What will happen is the phone will stop charging once it reaches a certain temperature. GPS, charging, sunlight...all increases the overall tmp of the car. We were on a couple hour drive when I realized the phone was down to 30-40% battery life. It took a bit to realize the LED wasn't lit up where the phone was plugged in. BatteryLife, a free widget, displays whether or not the phone is charging or not, along with temps. I had to hold the phone in front of the AC before it started charging again. As we were doing highway driving I left the phone out of the sun on the middle console for most of the trip. With no upcoming turns for 100 miles I didn't need to see where I was at on the highway.

 

[takeshi]

This happened once to me on a long drive. Shut my Droid off and stuck it in the console to cool before charging while we used the better half's Droid. Helps to have a spare.

 

[jon.ritter]

how do I monitor battery temps? Thanks for the help.

 

[pilot25]

I use tempmonitorlite. it displays a temp indicator in the status bar. Once you hit 120F the phone stops charging.

This is one of the major shortcomings of the phone. If you live in Vegas or Phoenix I'm guessing the car dock is worthless.