Anker is developing a new solar-powered portable charger… Take an early look at PowerCore Solar 10000!
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No.
Simply no.
Don’t.
Either don’t make it or ignore it. Lithium cells and solar is like peanut butter and dentures. Simply don’t.
If you want to create something how about a 30W USB-PD output solar panel product. Then your nice C-C cable 3ft-6ft long and then your Powercore nicely away in a cool spot. That would be something worthwhile.
looks ok, I have a very very similar product from some other company, and not using it!
I like the concept.
Peanut butter and dentures 
I’m gonna use that quote loads if you don’t mind 
Impractical in real life.
Do you have the specs, weight, size? Do you know the Wattage of the solar cells.
Assuming it is using current generally available technology, then it suffers from this:
No, simply no. Don’t. You can do a better solar job with say Anker’s 21W folding panel, you can do a better stored energy product with say a 20000mAh Powercore.
A useful way to bypass the realisation it is a bad idea is do thought experiments of specific events.
A) “wandering into the wilderness for a week”. Well in a week of sun you’ll not get much energy from such a small solar panel, and it may not be sunny, so you’re putting yourself at more risk. So you’d instead carry simply a bigger Powercore.
B) “wandering into the wilderness for 3 weeks”. Well you’d be likely finding it sunny probably for some of the time, and in the sunny periods you want to ingest energy quickly, so a big solar panel. For a long enough trip, solar works out lighter than just more Powercore. So you’d instead carry a big solar panel and a medium-size Powercore.
C) “I put it out every day to top-up and use each night”. Well it is cooking in heat every day, it then dies from heat and is useless.
I like the idea of having a powerbank and solar panel all in one, but overheating is still a problem. It may be possible to protect the battery in something such as aerogel, but that has all it’s own problems with it as well.
The picture makes it appear to be PIQ1?? Why not at least 2 (of course 3 would be better)
I think I may know the specs 
see the first pic…
Posting the photos here of what I have now
Have charged it may be once or twice fully, and then only solar charging.
I use it only for night as a backup light
I have one kind of like that, I use it as a light and I never completely depend on it for light. I use it for lighting dark corners and closets mostly, but if I go outside at night or something I take a real light.
The photo is of the original model!
The small solar panel struggles to recharge due to the nature of the photo electric effect and the buck-boost DC-DC conversion to charge the cells.
That solar panel reads as 120mAh / 0.6W but in truth it is rarely actually that. Do you own any solar panels? Put a USB meter on them. In reality the voltage fluctuates with the light density, it benefits most from clear skies and solar panel efficiency drops with heat, put a meter on one as it heats up
So what is 4.2V in perfect conditions is more like 2V on average. The cells within the combo product can never be recharged with less than 3.7V-4.2V so you have to DC-DC buck-boost the voltage up and that converion loses energy, so that actual 4.2V 120mA becomes 2V 120mA becomes 4V 240mA becomes 4V 150mA as each step of the inefficiency stacks up.
If you are going to bother with solar you need a big panel so in weaker conditions it still gets to both the minimum voltage and a worthwhile current to both to operate the cell charging electronics.
If you put this in weak sunshine, it would either begin discharging itself as the conversion electronics lost more energy than sun was giving, or not charge. So you’re boxed in electronically into this needing to be left for hours, days under heat which then fries the Lithium.
No, simply don’t.
I do have a Solar Panel from Anker, used it many times at picnics and during my hiking - just to test it, worked great, not opened it for some time now.
will test out with the meter and check it
For this specific solar battery with lamp, i had earlier tested with 2 LEDs (40%) battery charge and kept it in sun the whole day, it did go to 3 LEDs (60%) … but I hardly use it and only a backup…
Solar panels don’t age quickly in heat, they can be left for hours in sun and work exactly the next day. It takes years to degrade solar panels.
Lithium cells, totally different.
Anker’s 21W solar folding panel is excellent. Even in imperfect conditions you get 7W out of it. So a typical phone is 12Wh, so a 21W panel will fully recharge a typical phone in average conditions in 2 hours. But these smaller solar panels on the back of batteries, take a lot longer, and the cells are cooking in the heat that whole protracted period.
Ahh okay. I didn’t look closely at the name on the battery, so I didn’t notice.
Hopefully PIQ3 on the new one 
(though it would be a sad first powerbank with PIQ3)
You put your finger on the engineering problem of these combo solar+cells products.
Heat comes from:
Now in a Powercore, when it is charging, or discharging, it feels warm. It currently dissipates the heat over it’s whole surface, radiation, convection, conduction, it tends to be not in a warm place while charging. But put it in the sun at the same time…?
So if you attempt to shield the cells from solar heat, you are insulated the cells from releasing their own heat. Perfect storm.
Just a bad idea all round.
We do need IQ3 Powercore though.
We do need solar products, ideally ones which do direct DC-DC from solar to Powercore so it doesn’t do two DC-DC conversions like the current separate Anker products. There’s still useful things Anker can do, better than this, in the solar arena.
Also the one I have states (have not personally tested) to be water proof casing.
How about Anker PowerSolar?
Anker could well make a brilliant product.
Currently Anker did make a 14W and 21W folding solar panel product. The 14W version more often needs perfect sun, but the 21W could make usable energy from basically anything daylight, year round.
If you took that 21W solar cell technology and, either replaced or added, a direct DC output, and then you took something like a Powercore 20000 Essential PD, and made it accept DC input, then you’d bypass two DC-DC conversions and their associated losses.
You’d then have a complete system which would draw useful solar energy in any grade of daylight and store it. On a typical day you’d get enough to keep a phone or two phones recharged indefinitely regardless how busy the phones used. A fully off-grid portable system.
Anker has not made such a product. They intend to have solar-DC-Powerhouse but it then is not really portable as it has DC-AC.
I clicked this link thinking “hmmm posted only 3 hours ago, I wonder if @professor has already torn this product to shreds?”
What I see when I get here:
