Solar Power Bank? Another kind of joke

As the phones are equipped with smaller batteries and larger screens, a power bank is a useful tool to back up when the power is going to be off. That is wonderful.

Solar Power Bank

Solar Power Bank

My friend show me a solar PowerBank. He told me this is a eco-friendly PowerBank, of course, solar power bank. Just like the eco-driven watches, it will absorb the sunshine and transfer it to power stored inside Power Bank. I smiled and said to him, it is a high-tech toy but it will not help you so much as you expected when your PowerBank is out of power.

He doubted what I said. I said to him, we can have a test for that. We can use up all the capacity of it now. And we put it in sunshine and test that.

We empty the power bank with charging my iPhone 6 and his Samsung Galaxy S6. We tried to charge another phone samsung S5 and the power bank could not be up to charge.

It is noon time and we put in the sunsine for about 60 mins. When we took that back, and try to charge our Samsung S5 again. It did work but that only lasted 5 mins.

How and why this happen? my friend asked.

It is a high-tech joke for you, I said. The solar light charging technology is not so helpful as a charger. Because the solar pannel absorbs the sunlight and transfer it to power stored into PowerBank. The currency is like 200 – 300mah max. This shows that, a power bank with 10,000mah, we charge that one hour, it would charge 500mah(we make this bigger than actual just to show the speed). It will take 20 hours to charge it full. Don’t forget, we count as 500mah/hour for the currency and the best time – noon to charge. You cannot always charge these 20 hours at noon.

So there comes to you – it is a good technogy but you cannot use solar charging for daily use, I said to my friend. When you are travelling, it is better to charge your power bank fully before you starts. It is not a perfect technogy to carry without a full charge. Or, it is a joke when you need to charge your phone badly without another better choice.

What capacity shall I buy the Power Bank for my phone?

A Power bank is also known as battery charger. It is used by peopel when they are going out without a Travel charger or Car charger for emergency use. Initially it was powered by dry cell batteries for old Nokia phones without a touch screen. As li-ion battery cell technology developed, it was made up of li-ion battery and Li-polymer battery cells. During this time, the power bank capacity was high and could be used for touch screen smart phones or tablets.

You can find 1800mah, 2500mah, 4000mah, 8000mah , 12000mah Power Bank in retails. So, there goes the question, how can I know the capacity of power bank I am going to purchase? How can I know it will meet my requirement or not? Here we go some useful tips from us:

We buy a power bank with capacity of 4000mah. Normally it would be about 15-20% less for the output capacity, some even good ones only 10% or less loss. Why this happen? The capacity of the power bank is counted only by the battery cell, 4000mah. But the output should go from battery cell to PCB board with circuits and ICs, then to charging cables, then to your phones. During this process, there will be about 20% loss. You are right, it is crazy to know this. So, the real capacity is about 4000mah * (100% – 20%) = 3200mah.

Let’s continue to charge your phone now. If your iphone is 1850mah battery, there should be 3200mah / 1850mah = 1.73 times. We say, 1 time full and 70% the 2nd time.

But, I want to let you know, this is just in theory. Why? Actually in our charging process, the phone is still on. It needs power to support the phone working. Under normal condition, it can only charge this phone 1.4 ~ 1.5 times.

Question: I bought a 4000mah power bank, I can charge my phone with 1800mah battery 2 time FULLY.I am not joking. Why?

Answer: this may caused by the following: 1) the power bank capacity is 4000mah or more, and the loss is less than 20%. It will charge your phone 2 times full. But Lider Industrial Ltd will let you know that, things like you described are very slim. 2) Your phone is 1800mah, but after a year of usage, the real phone battery capacity dropped to 1600mah or even lower, 1400mah. So, 4000mah*80%/1600mah (phone label may say 1800mah) = 2 times full. The 2nd one is the regular rule.