Dead battery question on 2460

I have a 2450 and when you turn it off you have to just tap the off button and then a screen will come on asking if you want to turn it off. If you hold down the off button just a little too long it puts it into sleep and does not turn it off. When you push the turn on button next time the unit will go to the screen that you were on last. The unit was on and sleeping and using battery for all the time you thought it was off.

Also, if you turned the unit off on a far away place and didn't turn it on again till you were at another place it takes a little longer to acquire sats. as it is looking at the sats. that you were at last and takes a little bit to find the new area sats.

Always when you turn off your unit be sure it says do you want to turn it off. If not it is asleep and using battery. It is an art to be sure and just push the off button just a little so it doesn't go to sleep. Garmin should have done this a little different.

One or two hours will not charge the unit enough.

When we take a trip I always charge my 2450 overnight before we leave and I take my unit into the hotel and charge it over night each night if we are going to use it the next day.. That way I know it is charged even though it charges while on the battery but if it is all the way down it takes a long time to charge..

Hope this helps.

Maybe there is an intermittent connection in the car cigar lighter cord or the nuvi could be asleep when not plugged in like mgarledge says. Some cigar lighter outlets turn off when the ignition is off.

If the nuvi has a mini-USB connector it can be charged by connecting it to a computer, but a USB socket will not supply all the current that the battery needs to charge quickly enough, or worse, the computer could go to sleep and turn off the USB sockets.

I use a cell phone charger with a mini USB connector from time to time. If the battery is very low it will take about 5 hours to charge fully.

dobs108

When I got my first GPS five years ago, I could hardly wait to play with it. Imagine my chagrin when I plugged it into the my car's cigarette lighter and nothing happened. Turns out, the lighter's socket was bad. The car was four years old and that was the very first time I tried to use the lighter plug. Who knew!

Phil

Thanks very much for taking the time to post a reply.

There are a couple of things that were suggested that I want to comment on:

#1 The 2460LMT does not have a "sleep mode" unless plugged into a power source, thus the possibility of the unit being left in sleep mode and ran the battery down was not really possible.

#2 The last position of satellite acquisition was the same place as the last trip and up until about 15 minutes into the trip the satellites were working. It seems like during the 15 minutes the battery went completely dead and the 2460LMT quit working but was still displaying but no longer working.

#3 My main question is does the car charging cable really charge the battery while the unit is on or not?

Again thanks for the replies.

Troubleshooting in the manual
"The device does not charge in my vehicle."

*Check fuse
*Verify the vehicle is turned on and is supplying power to the power outlet.
*If the device is place in direct sunlight or in a hot environment, it cannot charge

Yes, it does charge but much more slowly than if the unit were powered off and the bulk of the power was being sent to the battery charge circuit. When the unit powered on, the main bulk of the power being drawn is to power the unit...charging the battery is secondary. The charge being supplied to the unit's battery would be more like a trickle charge and would take quite a while to charge if the battery was run down to the point of being almost/near dead.

Yes, the car adapter cable does charge the battery if it's properly plugged into the vehicle and the GPS.

You can easily tell this by plugging the cable into your GPS and turning the car on. If the battery indicator in the upper right of the Where To screen shows a lightning bolt in it then the unit is charging.

If there is no lightning bolt then the GPS is running on it's internal battery and there is something wrong with your connection which could be in the cable, in your vehicle, or possibly the GPS itself.

Aha, good point. Yes, look for the lightning bolt to indicate charging. I need to remember this if I develop a problem.

I had the lightning bolt and the display was still working until I unplugged the charger and plugged in back in. At this point the red light was on on the cable but the unit was dead with or without the cable. All was dead until charged back on USB of computer. All is still working today.

I am doing a little test right now. I left the unit on just on the battery for about 30 minutes and the picture of the battery turned yellow on the end. Although 30 minutes is a short time to run the battery down I will accept that for now. My test is that I have put the unit back on the car charger with the battery in this condition and I will wait to see if there is any charge put back in the battery. My lighter plug is hot all the time without the ignition being on BTY. I will check it for the next couple of hours and if no indication of a problem then I will leave it on all night and recheck in the morning.

OK, now I don't know what is going on. Running my test as above I left the unit on and connected to the car charger for about 45 minutes or so and just went out to check on it. I disconnected from the cradle and the battery picture shows full green. I turned the unit off for about 10 seconds and then back on. The battery picture still showed full green and continues as of right now.
I cannot come to a conclusion right now but I'm now thinking the battery is just going bad. I guess time will tell.

Thanks for letting me bend your ear(or rather your eyes) and I'll be quiet now until something more definite happens.

Update: Well after 1 hour and 40 minutes of leaving the unit on just the battery it just now started showing yellow on the picture of the battery. It only charged 45 minutes with the unit on and connected to the car charger. I'll shut up now.

Thanks mgarledge, I kept getting a dead battery and had no idea why.

If you have a 2460 then your unit doesn't go into standby so mgarledge's info doesn't apply.

If you have something else then now maybe you know why.

Very helpful! Thanks!

Please keep us informed. This helps us and also helps us help others!

Thank you for your contributions.

An inexpensive volt meter can be pretty helpful in these situations. This way you can measure what's coming from the outlet.

OK, after reading all the post about my post I tried to find some where that said Nuvi 2450 had a sleep mode...couldn't..

I have turned my unit off by holding it too long and when I turn it back on it was where it was when I turned it off.

Tried to do it again on battery power and it booted back up like it was off.
Tried to do it on car power and it turned back on where it was. That looks like a sleep mode but not sure.

I was at my desk the time it seemed like it had a sleep mode but I can not reproduce it.....I know I wasn't dreaming but like I said I am old.

Thanks for all the post above so now I think I don't have a sleep mode...