First, thanks for the informative reply Sensei.
I should have been more clear. The second part of my post about "having loss in my circuit" was not about normal charging that I do. It refers specifically to the experiment with the modified usb wire and the multimeter in series. Simply put, when I use the wire with my setup the phone receives some current but not enough to charge. During all of my testing there are no games or apps running, just the OS.
I have one charging base that works really well, and even using that base with this modified wire the phone is still losing charge slowly.
-Beta