Can this pack be plugged in charging itself while also charging another device wirelessly (pass through)?
I cannot find much info other than, $17.99 is not much of a deal as it can be had other places for the same price. Okay deal if you buy two.
Exactly what I came to ask.
I certainly wouldn’t pay this price.
Why not just charge the phone with the cable instead of charging the charger at the same time as charging the phone…
Because it would be acting as a wireless charger and still charge the battery pack when you remove the phone.
Amazon reviews/questions suggest that passthrough works: https://www.amazon.com/Aduro-Wireless-Battery-Charger-Compatible/dp/B07GQDWP37
Wired charging tends to be faster and more energy efficient. Especially if using a 35W charger and USB-C cable. In some cases from near 0% to 100% charged in under 35 min.
If I recall, induction charging is at best 80% efficient in energy transfer, generates heat, and you generally do not want to risk Li Ion batteries short. YMMV.
Is this a serious question? I almost hesitate to answer, if indeed it is a serious question, the answer is “yes, theoretically you could”, but you wouldn’t want to. When you charge a device, whether it is the phone, or this battery pack, you lose (or waste) a portion of the power you are charging with because electronics are not efficient in the use of power. (Kind of like pouring water from one bucket into another with a guaranteed amount of spilling.) This is most noticeable in that some of the wasted power is turned into heat. For example, if you had 100mA of power coming out of a battery pack going into the phone, you would lose a percentage of that power in the form of heat. Lets say 10% is lost. That means only 90mA of power goes into the phone. So if you wanted to use the battery pack to “recharge itself”, you would be wasting a percentage of the stored power as you recycle it. You’d basically make a pocket heater that would eventually run out of power.
So basically, the battery pack would last longer if you only used it to charge your phone.
You might think, “Oh this battery pack is at 60% but I will wire it to recharge itself” > the fact is even if the charging was 100% efficient, meaning no wasted energy, it could never get itself up to 100% charged. The very best it could do is remain at 60%. Another example: if you had a 1 gallon bottle of water that was half full, and you used a pump to pump the water out of the gallon bottle and directly back into the same bottle, you can’t magically fill the bottle to the top, it will always only have 1/2 gallon of water. If the pump was leaky, you would eventually run out of water.
To answer your question: One reason is if your phone uses a different connector from the charger… Recently on a trip, I had one of these packs… I also had 1 USB-A to USB-C, 1 USB-A to lightning, and I wanted to charge the battery, my AirPods Max and my phone at the same time. This was possible by plugging using Qi for the phone, the lightning cable for the AirPods, and the USB-C cable to plug in the battery.
Was it great for the battery? probably not. Was I happy to have a charged phone and headphones for my flight… yeah, that was worth the damage to the battery IMO.
Looks like this is offered on Walmart @ $39.99, so really good deal. Might pick up 3 sets of 2 for Christmas gifts.
I am supposing this is how it will be shipped to you, in this box/case.
Also here are the reviews, from Walmart again, for this product.
From the vendor:
Yes you can charge this battery and still use it to charge your phone while it’s charging as long as it already has some power.
If the battery pack and the phone are both low/dead, you have 1 wire while traveling, and you want to charge both at night. Very logical and common reason for wanting to passthrough charge. Also as someone else said, different charger wire than your phone has.
Just because you wouldn’t need that, doesn’t mean you should laugh at and criticize someone who would do this in a way you are unable to think of.
[MOD: removed last sentence. no personal attacks, pls]
I apologize, I shouldn’t have said that. Thank you for leaving the rest of my post up there.
Ah! I guess I totally misunderstood gwbaker’s question! Thank you for explaining. (sheepish look)
In that light, your answer is sort of correct. 99.9% of battery powerbanks throttle output when being charged, so no “pass-through”. They will either take a charge or give a charge. However, there are some that run a 60/40 pass through duty cycle. Meaning they will output power for 60 milliseconds and then charge themselves for 40 milliseconds (roughly). This does create a lot of heat, and the heat is what kills the efficiency of the battery. If you do this enough the powerbank will start to lose capacity. That being said, I doubt this powerbank can do passthrough. This is because of the nature of the inductive (Qi) charging, it does not like to be switched on an off. So it will most likely charge you device but not charge itself if plugged in while doing so. Also, some (like one sold by Gorilla Gadgets a few yrs back) will brick if you try to do pass through.
Anyone know if the charging input is micro usb or usb C? Cant really make it out from the picture and I don’t see it specified.
Per the vendor:
It has both Input options actually so you can charge it up via the Micro USB or Type C port. There’s an image on the listing actually now that shows the ports located on the top of the battery:
Update: The Type C port is just for input on this model.
The USB-C is only for input? The USB-C on mine can be input or output.