waldo15

Hi there folks!

I have spent less than 24 hours with my bundle 'o' joy Treo Pro and I am in love again (after I had a bad break-up with my 700p I was a bit hesitant). Anyhow, things would be perfect if I did not have this USB charging problem. Here's the jist:

I have a couple of Seidio USB chargers, one for the car and another for the regular AC plugs. I have used both in the past to charge my USB devices: old AT&T Tilt and iPod nano 2nd generation, plus my wife's Centro every now and then. The chargers have been working great until the Pro came into the picture.

You see, when I plug the Pro into any of these chargers, the battery won't charge, period. I thought the chargers were suddenly broken but no, they still work and they still charge other devices, just not the Pro. If I however user the Pro charger (the one included in the box) I have no problem charging the phone. Even further, plugging the phone directly to my laptop also will charge it. And one more! if I plug the phone to my Redfly, the phone will charge!

Specs wise, the Treo Pro charger is rated at a whooping 5.5V@1000mA, while the other chargers rate at 5.3V@700mA. I know the USB spec and many laptops usually do not provide 1A in every USB port, as the devices you connect to them are low-power anyways, so that puzzles me a bit.

So there are two possible scenarios:

- Treo Pro only charges from high-current USB ports and chargers
- There is some bug in the Treo Pro battery charger (similar to the 800w?) that will not allow you to charge the phone from lower-current USB chargers.

Anyone has found a similar situation? Which chargers are you using that are indeed working with the Pro?


EDIT:

Wow! I'm sorry I confused some folk with the high-tech speak :P

Bottom line is this: Chargers that work with the Pro have to have the data pins (D+/-) shorted.

It does seem that newer chargers are configured like this (i.e. Pro), old and cheap chargers (i.e. Seidio) do not short the data pins and thus the Treo does not recognize them as valid chargers. Since this is not expressed in the technical specs of each charger it is a matter of trial an error, so maybe it is better to list a few true tested chargers so people are not shooting in the dark when shopping for a charger.

Tested USB chargers that work:

• Palm official international charger
• Ionhub (iGo competitior) tip
• Motorola H12 BT headset charger
• Nokia DC-10
• Motorola Q accesories. Reportedly: car charger, wall charger.
• Walmart car charger for cellphones: Car Model # WMCLA-MICUSB
• Motorola MicroUSB High Performance Car Charger (thanks to Andrew from Treonauts.com)
• Motorola MicroUSB Rapid Travel Charger (same as above)

If a charger is not listed, doesn't mean it won't work but simply it has not been tested.

Advanced option.

Also, for those who know their way around a soldering iron, you can open your desired charger and short the D+/- terminals (the two terminals in the middle) but that will certainly void your charger's warranty and/or break your charger if it is hard to open .

Another trick is to grab any USB cable and short the D+/- leads in it. This cable will thus only be useful for charging and not for data transfering of any kind, so make sure you label it properly!

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Ode to the Treo Pro: you had to look so good, you had to be HTC in disguise...

frause

Look here: Charging (or My Treo doesn't charge)

Wait! 5.5V? Where does it say THAT? Isn't that outside USB spec? My Palm usb-charger says 5V.

According to Wikipedia:
"The USB specification provides a 5 V supply on a single wire from which connected USB devices may draw power. The specification provides for no more than 5.25 V and no less than 4.75 V (5 V±5%) between the positive and negative bus power lines.[14] Initially, a device is only allowed to draw 100 mA. It may request more current from the upstream device in units of 2 mA up to a maximum of 500 mA."

"On-The-Go and Battery Charging Specification both add new powering modes to the USB specification. The latter specification allows USB devices to draw up to 1.5 A (low and full speed or 900mA in Hi-Speed mode) from hubs and hosts or up to 1.8A for dedicated chargers that follow the Battery Charging Specification. The dedicated charger shorts the D+ and D- pins together and will not send or receive any information on those lines, allowing for the creation of very simple, high current chargers to be manufactured. The increased current (faster charging) will occur once the host/hub and devices both support the new charging specification."

waldo15

Thanks for the pointer! Good stuff there. I'll try it and see if indeed that's the case.

EDIT [Warning: Science ahead]: So I found another way to check what's going on. I have a Watts up? PRO unit in my office, this is basically a meter monitoring how much power a device running in AC mode is drawing. So I plugged in my Seidio Charger with an iPod and I see 2.5W, without accounting for the efficiency of the meter the Sedio is providing roughly 500mA@5V. now I plugged in the Treo Pro with its charger and I saw the phone went up to 4W, something like 800mA@5V. Definitely more juice.

My guess is The Pro does detect the Seidio charger (detects the 5V across the USB power pins) but since the charger cannot provide enough current it then shuts off the internal charging circuitry. So either Palm adjusts the current rating via a patch later or simply I'll go out and buy a high-current USB charger, which may be the way to go if I'm the only one having this problem

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Ode to the Treo Pro: you had to look so good, you had to be HTC in disguise...

waldo15

The 5.5V probably accounts for when there's nothing plugged in the charger (no load). When you do load the charger, then you see a drop in the voltage which brings it closer to the max limit 5.25V.

I see what you got there. I did check the chargers and indeed the Pro has D+/- shorted while the Seidio did not. Man you nailed it just right. I did short the Seidio but now I'm scared to test it with my Pro .

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Ode to the Treo Pro: you had to look so good, you had to be HTC in disguise...

frause

I'm not entirely sure what you are getting at. [WARNING: MORE SCIENCE]:
In the name of science (It works, *****es!) I've just slit up the cable from my last non-compliant USB-charger. A Jabra micro-usb charger for my Jabra BT8040 bluetooth headset rated at 500mA. After a few measurments, I made the following observations:


1)
a) The Treo doesn't charge with the stock Jabra charger.
b) The Treo Pro charges fine with the D+ and D- lines shorted.
c) The Jabra headset charges with the stock Jabra charger.
d) The Treo of course charge with the included Palm charger without modifications.

2)
a) With the stock Jabra charger, the Treo will draw 1.26mA@5.27V (6,6mW) Yes! 1.26mA. It will DRAIN the battery,
b) With D+ and D- shorted it will draw 630mA@4.38V. (2,76W) (The battery meter rises).
c) The Jabra headset will draw 130mA when charging.
d) With the included Palm charger, the Treo draws 910mA@5.03V (4.57W).

Conclusion:
You don't need a high power usb charger to charge your Treo. (It would of course charge faster though.) As long as the charger can output a tension around the USB specs.

waldo15

I see. From that last experiment then the conclusion/solution is clear: The Pro is expecting to see the shorted D+/- to start draining power, if the charger does not have those terminals shorted then the Pro will not charge.

Great findings y'all!

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bread

thanks guys!

I don't even have my Treo Pro (yet), but I learned something.
This probably explains why my cheap USB phone charger, a generic charger for Motorola phones, does NOT charge my Garmin GPS. when I tried to use it, the GPS acted like I plugged it in to a computer,.. and the battery slowly *drained* instead of charging.

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publicid

To All,
I think all of you have a PhD of some sort... Way to complicated for me - a country boy... can some of you just give a simple answer:
can we charge Pro with a charger other than the one from Palm?

publicid

Now I am really scared to buy a third party USB charge. Anyone have knowledge if this product would charge the Pro? I intend to buy it as part of my travel kits. BELKIN Mini Surge Protector with USB Charger.
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProdu...uct_Id=400738#

Thank you in advance...

frause

Yes. BUT: the data pins (the two middle pins in the USB-socket on the charger) has to be shorted.
You can either make sure the charger already have shorted pins, open it and solder them short yourself, or make a special cable with shorted data leads.
Someone should put this in a wiki somewhere...
The only charger in my possesion with D+/- shorted from factory is a Boxwave Versacharger Pro.

Dsol

My iGo adapter doesn't work either. Very annoying because now it looks like I will need to have a second charger in my car instead of one charger with a bunch of adapters for my RAZR, plantronics ear piece, etc..

I am sure the guys at Radio Shack will have no clue what I am talking about when I ask if they have a "high power" micro usb tip.

Can anyone tell me if it is feasable to pry open that tip and short the two leads. To me seems like very little room to work with.

Thanks

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PDA Lineage: Palm Pilot, Palm V, Palm Tungsten, Treo 650 (Cingular), Treo 750 (AT&T), Treo Pro GSM (unlocked)

frause

Technically it is not a "high power" microusb tip, more like a "dedicated charger" tip.

If the tip is molded together, it may be easier to get some sort of USB-cable between the tip and the treo and short them in the cable.

levinda

My ionhub (iGo competitior) tip works and my Motorola H12 BT headset charger works.

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Daniel Levin

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publicid

From what I gathered here, it seemed the issue is more related with the MicroUSB cabling, not as much as the USB port for the power source. Am I right? If so, the real question would be - when buying the MicroUSB charging cable, what would be the right question to ask.

Furthermore, I would like to seek the technical knowledge of the folks here - will this work?
Micro USB Retractable Sync & Charge Cable
http://store.treocentral.com/smartph.../5A19A4113.htm

I like the retractable cable as part of my travel kit so my luggage wouldn't be too messy. Sometime I wonder how I ever get thru the airport security check. Thank you all in advance...

Fintan

Output of the charger has to be 1 1-1 1, middle pair shorted.
I prefer cables to be standard.

publicid: If you are already carrying around a miniUSB cable - most of us do - look for mini>micro pigtail (Motorola SKN6252 on eBay, few $$).

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oVan

This car charger will definitely work: Nokia DC-10 http://www.nokiausa.com/A41157337

You only need some black tape to hide the Nokia logo :-)

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frause

No. It is not in the cable. Cables are just cables. Four leads and shield straight through. Although you can have a cable with the data leads short to work around a charger not compliant with the USB battery charging specification, it will not work for normal USB data transfer.

When you have a USB host made solely for the purpose of charging other USB devices, to be compliant with the USB battery charging specification, it should have the data pins shorted. When connected to a USB host (for example a PC), a USB device (the Treo) may only draw 100mA but can request more power. Shorted data pins is the same as saying: "I'm a charger. Go ahead and draw up to 1.8A"

Simply put; a charger won't "speak USB" enough to make an agreement with the Treo for more power. So to not go over the 100mA limit, the Treo won't go into charging mode.

oVan

There's a bug in the Treo Pro: when it doesn't charge with your cable, after you soft-reset it pretends to charge (the red led is active) and power status says "charging", even though in reality your battery will not gain anything.

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publicid

Thank you all for the responds. I guess folks like me will probably have to spend a few extra $ and buy Palm's charger and cable. All these theories and short the data pin D+/- is just a bit too complicated... Such as life and life goes on...

berdinkerdickle

Good thing I had a moto-q Chrarger, the official one that came with my pro won't charge.

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Berd