After experimenting, I can now give a slightly more detailed description of the behaviour:

1.) When booting with wall charger, the phone does charge. When I unplug the wall charger it will STILL indicate that it is charging. It will NOT recognize being plugged to PC via USB.

2.) When booting unplugged, it will act normally, that is, it will recognize being plugged into a PC. Mass storage mode works, PC suite I cannot tell at the moment. However, it will NOT recognize the wall charger being plugged in, it does not appear to be charging.

btw ... is this the correct thread for such a more technical question?