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What is up with stand alone phone, etc. batteries?

S

SaltyNuts

Platinum Member
I went on a kick awhile back when i found out you could buy them so cheap.

I got several in the mauh, or whatever it is, 10,000 range. I want a more powerful one now.

But on thing I noticed. is that, with one exception, the batteries could not be recharging phones or anything else while the batteries themselves were being recharged. To charge a phone off the battery i literally have to unplug the cord from the wall that charges the battery.

The only exception i found was was an EasyAcc. Battery. So much better as you can just leave battery plugged in at all times, charging your phone, and know battery will be at 100% when you nees it.

Anyone know any other batter brands like this? or is there some specification or something i can look for? Thanks!
 
The feature you're looking for is called "Pass Through" Charging. RAVPower supports it on several of their USB PD packs. Anker used to support it, but as mostly pulled the feature, citing severe Power Bank lifespan decreases in situations where the connected devices pull more power than the charger can provide, causing the power bank to switch rapidly between charge and drain modes.

RAVPower gets around this a bit by limiting the number of USB-A Ports to 2, along with the USB-C PD Port. If you charge via USB-C, you can use Pass Through to power the USB-A ports while charging the pack, as its assumed that a USB PD AC Adapter will provide more than enough power. When you charge via USB-A port, the system will only allow you to Pass Through to the other USB-A Port. If you connect something like a phone or laptop to the USB-C Port, Pass-Through will immediately shut off and it will go into drain mode.

While Anker has outright removed the feature from most products, RAVPower continues to offer it, but with the caveat that if you ask support about it, they don't recommend it for any more than occasional use, as the charging circuitry apparently isn't rated for that kind of workload for long durations. "Leaving it plugged in at all times" is specifically what they don't recommend, and the main reason Anker has stopped providing the feature. As always, caveat emptor.
 
Had an (albeit cheap) Motorola one that prematurely died after using it that way.

I would recommend getting an Anker charger with 5 or 6 ports so you can have your battery charging at the same time as your phone and whatever else and not worry about killing the battery prematurely using pass through charging.
 
Are you talking about power banks?

I think the reason is that lithium ion batteries are very complex to charge, they need to be balanced charged and current going into each cell has to be closely monitored and regulated. If you are discharging it while charging it, it's much more complicated to handle that as you don't know how much current is going into the cell vs the load. It CAN be done, it's just more complicated so they probably don't bother. That said I have an Anker battery bank and pretty sure I can have it on charge while it's also discharging.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Are you talking about power banks?

I think the reason is that lithium ion batteries are very complex to charge, they need to be balanced charged and current going into each cell has to be closely monitored and regulated. If you are discharging it while charging it, it's much more complicated to handle that as you don't know how much current is going into the cell vs the load. It CAN be done, it's just more complicated so they probably don't bother. That said I have an Anker battery bank and pretty sure I can have it on charge while it's also discharging.
Click to expand...

Anker used to have the feature, but since late 2017 they've been removing it. They have a couple niche products like their Hybrid charger that will charge all devices first via the AC outlet, then switch to charging its own battery, but not at the same time.

All these systems that are at least a little reputable shouldn't be charging and discharging the battery at the same time. Instead a portion of the charging circuit for the batteries is used to power the devices. That's the real problem there. The Charging circuit used in these devices simply aren't sized and cooled large enough to deal with pass through charging long term. It's particularly a power bank problem mainly because they're almost all battery, and the desire by consumers to have smaller, all enclosed devices leaves little room to add larger, properly cooled charging circuits.
 
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