A hub port works fine.
It's a mini USB port.
"Mini USB" devices have a five pin connector, four for standard USB power and signals and a 5th pin for a resistor to ground(?) which allows the device to identify its matching cable.
A lot of rechargeable devices that use Mini USB just will not work with any random cable, you have to find one with that resistor in the correct range that the device expects, for it to work normally.
The cable itself is also critical for any device expecting high current; many cheap USB cables use very thin wires and have high resistance, which means devices detect undervoltage as soon as they start to draw any significant current.
Try the shortest, thickest cable you can find - ones sold for use with portable hard drives are usually OK, they are intended for relatively high loads. But, it may still have a mismatch on the programming resistor.
Micro USB cables also have the cable detect resistor facility, but they seem a lot less critical between devices.
This article covers the same Mini USB power problem with a Garmin GPS: