USB charging

[c'est la vie]

Bonjour !
It seems that my Z72 gets charged through the USB cable, although somewhat slower. It came as a nice surprise, and it is undocumented to the best of my knowledge. My question is: why is this PDA designed with 2 connectors and 2 cables, since you can synch and charge with one? If it is a business strategy to get more money out of "captive" consumers by selling non-accessory "accessories", which would be an obvious motive, then why are the replacement chargers so hard to come by?

[Nine]

Welcome to Brighthand, C'est la vie.

USB cables can only provide a trickle charge to your palm unit, and it is more effective charging it through its own charger. There is only so much current available for USB ports to provide to any attached PC or Mac devices so it should not be relied upon if you have many such devices attached.

[paul novotny]

Hi c'est la vie,

Nine is correct. And just to confirm, from the palmOne Knowledge library:

The Palm(tm) Zire handheld has a lithium-ion rechargeable battery that is charged with the included power adapter, or through the mini-USB connector through trickle charge. However, some systems may not support trickle-charging, such as laptop computers. We recommend using the power adapter to recharge the Palm Zire handheld. It takes three hours to charge the handheld using the power adapter. The trickle charge method can take nine hours to fully charge the handheld; therefore, this method is recommended as a supplemental charging method only.

Personally, I've often recharged in 30 minutes, but you can leave it charging overnight, no harm to the battery. And, with the battery about 75% down, I've had the Zire plugged into the computer while working and it seemed to top off in about 5 hrs via trickle charge.

And your mention of two cables brings to mind that some intrepid users have tried to use the mini-USB cable simultaneously with the power brick to charge the handheld. It has been documented that this does not cause damage. But, it really doesn't speed up the charging process any, either.

Best

Paul

[grizzly]

For reasons unknown to me, I arrived at work this week with the batteries on my new Zire72 completely drained. Arghh.

I plugged the unit into my USB port for about 4 hours and I could still not turn the palm on. Only when I connected the palm to the charging adapter at home for a while would the unit even turn on.

Is this normal behaviour? I would have expected the USB connection to provide enough power after 4 hours to turn the unit on. This USB connection has worked in past to top up the device, but it wasn't able to bring it back from a dead state.

Anyone else experianced this behaviour?

Grizzly

[imported_jm_aub]

Yes, same as above, with battery drained, I couldn't start the Palm with the power button, a soft reset, or the mini USB cable. Only the power adaptor did the trick. No loss of data, though. Same question.

[imported_jm_aub]

On a similar note, I saw an accessory for both charging and sync. It is a USB cable (normal size) at one end, and two cables at the other end, one being a mini USB and the other going to the battery. Given what was said above about trickle charge via USB, can this cable provide more power? (I suppose it does because it goes straight to the power female plug on the Zire72) Comments and feedback welcome.

[grizzly]

jm_aub

Is this the type of device you were referring to?

Javo Edge

regards,
Grizzly

Originally posted by jm_aub
On a similar note, I saw an accessory for both charging and sync. It is a USB cable (normal size) at one end, and two cables at the other end, one being a mini USB and the other going to the battery. Given what was said above about trickle charge via USB, can this cable provide more power? (I suppose it does because it goes straight to the power female plug on the Zire72) Comments and feedback welcome.

[imported_jm_aub]

Yes indeed. Does it charge well ?

[Mark Booth]

Resurrecting an older topic...

Now that I'm regularly using my Zire 72 with TomTom Navigator 5 in my cars, I needed a method to power the Palm. I opted for the Belkin USB cigarette lighter charger because the supplied cable has a standard USB (Type A) on one end and has both a MINI USB plug AND a mini charging plug on the other end. It's designed to be both a charging and a syncing cable.

While using the setup on Saturday, the charging plug accidently became dislodged a bit from the Zire 72's charging port while the MINI USB connection remained tightly in place. I drove for a couple of hours with it this way and later noticed that my Zire 72's battery was down to about 75%.

Lesson learned... with heavy Palm Zire 72 use (such as constant Bluetooth/Navigation), having power just at the MINI USB port is NOT enough to prevent battery drain. At least, that seems to be my experience. And, given that a dead battery means a dead Zire 72, EVEN IF YOU HAVE THE MINI USB plugged in, it seems prudent to be sure you at least use the charging plug connection for heavy Zire 72 use.

Mark

[GNandGS]

aaaannnd I found that if the T3 was nearly drained, the thinkpad I had wouldnt charge it via USB. In fact, for some reason it started giving errors suggesting I use an external power supply. If already mostly charged, it would charge it up or at least maintain it. This behavior just started one day after many months of normal charging/use... even after a MB swap (warranty) it kept doing this new behavior.

So far, it looks like the Dell XPS2 Im using charges fine in any instance via USB. Time will tell if it starts doing what the thinkpad did.

Not all 5V are created equal? <grin>