iPhone's finicky power requirements

Yesterday was my first real test of taking my iPhone on the road. I had a long day of car travel and since I'd stopped charging my iPhone every night, electing instead to only charge it as needed, I was sure to need to charge it in the car.

No problem, right? Not so fast there big guy...

Fully expecting to have to charge my iPhone from my vehicle's 12 volt "accessory" outlet (formerly known as the "cigarette lighter") I tossed my trusty Griffin PowerJolt adapter (US$20) into the car for my journey. PowerJolt fits into any 12V accessory outlet and features a status LED and replaceable fuse so that you don't fry your iPhone. You're going to want to grab one of these if you have an iPhone folks, they're essential. I still find it weird to think of an iPod charger as my mobile phone charger, but I digress.

I watched my iPhone's power deplete (anyone else notice how fast iPhone blasts through the 20, 10 and 5 percent warnings?) until it eventually displayed the "Connect to power" warning. I plugged the PowerJolt into a 12 volt accessory outlet splitter (about $9 from Radio Shack) so that I could keep power running to my GPS receiver and charge my iPhone. Bad idea.

When you initially plug a dead iPhone into power you can't use it immediately, it displays a "Charging, please wait" message. This is a stark difference from how most mobile phones behave, I'm used to plugging in a dead mobile and being able to make a call right away. Not the case with iPhone, it needs a few minutes to get a good enough base charge to power the radio before you can make a call.

After waiting for 20 minutes on the "Charging, please wait" screen I began to get annoyed that I couldn't make a call when I needed to. Suspicious of splitter, I yanked it out (thankfully my Garmin nüvi 660 has a pretty decent battery) and plugged the PowerJolt in directly. Voila! After about 4-5 minutes of "Charging, please wait" iPhone was ready to make calls again.

The lessons here are: a) don't expect to plug a dead iPhone into power and immediately be able to make calls with it, and b) give it straight power and don't split the 12 volts with another device.