hi all
I don't know if this is normal or not but I have an android device connected via USB and in the charge-only mode the output of the lsusb command shows the vendor/product id as "0bb4:0ca3". But when I enable usb tethering on the android device, the output of lsusb now shows the product id has changed to "0bb4:0ffe"...is this normal for the id of a device to change? Maybe the connection settings for the android display a different id for each setting?

Yes, devices can advertise different USB profile capabilities; some of them controlled by software configuration as you're seeing here. The question would be whether or not this is a problem in communicating with your device; or merely the simple knowledge that a script or program needs to further understand these details.

One of the embedded processors which we've used for a subservient device advertises itself as one device type for boot mode and a different device type for operational mode; both modes are USB communications modes. I see the behavior you're describing as the same thing.