I have the USB cable connected to the cradle, so I can copy stuff to the phone/SD card and also charge the phone from the USB. However, when I turn my PC off and the phone is no longer drawing power from the USB, it discharges the battery! I left it on the cradle overnight, checking before I went to bed that it was at 100% charge. 6 hours later, I find it's switched off, and when I try to turn it on I get the "hellomoto" screen for a few seconds then it switches itself off, as if it doesn't have enough battery to power up fully.

After charging it on the cradle with the PC on for 10 minutes, I took it off, turned it on and it powers up OK. I checked the battery meter and it said 49%. When I put it back on the cradle to charge up some more, the meter dropped straight down to 19%?!?!?

This is really bizarre - firstly, how come the phone discharges when left on the cradle with the USB connected. Second, why does the battery level drop by 30% when I put it back on the cradle to charge??!

EDIT:: In the time it took me to type this post, the battery is now up to 58%? How can this be right? I'm thinking that the battery meter is not actually accurate...

Thanks,

G

Duh, if the computer isnt on, no power to USB...

I have Windows XP...I just place it in standby. Computer is basically off, and phone still charges. Try that.
Lol.....-Guest- is right though...;-) you should have known that no power to pc = no power to usb.

You're missing his point a little though. When on the cradle with no power it drains the battery, not that it doesn't charge but it DRAINS the battery. This is true, mine went dead in 2 hours from a full charge this way. I believe it is transmitting power (not data) over the cable the whole time it is on the cradle. You have to avoid this when ever possible.

Actually Guest, it depends on the machine. My desktop keeps the USB bus powered while its off. you can also get a seperately powered USB hub to keep your phone powered. I think this might be a problem if you have a comp that you turn off and you keep your phone on the cradle all the time.

it's possible that the phone is seeking for a 'active sync' continously since it's docked.

Thanks for pointing out that the first 2 weren't answering the question
It's only a problem if I forget to take it off the cradle when I power off the PC
G

Does this happen on different PCs? I'm guessing your USB hub is wanting to draw power even though the PC is off.

Try adding a powered USB hub between the PC and the cradle. That should help...

I've only got the one workable PC at the moment. I don't use a USB hub, it's plugged straight in the back of the machine, i.e. native USB straight from the mainboard.

Thanks,

G

The way electricity works is that if there is a path from negative to positive then power will flow. Simply by haivng this circuit the battery is drained. I'm guessing that USB has some sort of circuitry that puts a load on the battery and provides a complete circuit. I would have put something on the MPx200 circuit board that prevents the flow of power out the USB port but the Motorola engineers may not have thought of this problem, they may have not thought it would be a problem, or the people that experience this problem may have defective phones. If you get a powered USB hub, you leave your computer on all the time, or a computer that constantly provides power to its USB hub regardless of whether it is powered on or off you won't have this problem.

Yeah this is common with USB devices like cameras. If you leave a digital camera hooked up to the USB port, even with the camera off, it will kill the camera's battery in no time at all. At least... that's what it has done in my experience.