Dear @AnkerTechnical I set you a challenge. You are game for it?
The “intelligent” power budget sharing is a great idea. So you can deliver all the power to 1 ports, or you share the power out as more ports used. Example is the Atom 4, you can give 100W 20V 5V to one port but as more ports are connected, the Voltage drops until you end up nearer to 30W for a port.
We accept you sit in an awkward need to find sweetspot between these 4 competitors:
- using commodity technology in general to keep costs down. An intelligent product too expensive will not succeed, too commodity just becomes the unforgotten.
- differentiation for profit, to fund further differentiation. My main ask here.
- reliability. Many here pick Anker for reliability, as no matter how clever a product is, if unreliable it will be cruxified in reviews.
- size. Commodity electronics lower cost but increase size.
These 4 competitors determine the sweetspot. It is not easy, if it were we’d be on the different side of the ask VS answer.
I’m sure you came up with this intelligence idea all by yourself but some of us were asking for this over 18 months back.
This suits real world, real life problems, where the device’s biggest need is when it’s own internal battery is lowest charge, a laptop for example nearly empty will happily take in 45W of 20V 2.25A and as it gets fuller, it will be happier taking 15V or 9V…
I challenge you to bring this intelligence down a notch in size and bring it into more places.
60W is a common upper budget. 45W for laptop and 15W left for say a phone. Or 45W and say a Powercore. The intelligence can be balance of the device and the owner, say the Powercore had spent the last hours draining itself to keep the laptop full, and then the owner gets near a wall socket and plugs in both the laptop and the Powercore. The laptop is near full so doesn’t need much Wattage to get back full but the Powercore is near empty so it needs more.
Invent IQ3 please. Merge Quick Charge with Power Delivery. You did it with IQ2 to make a 18W port which is backwards compatible and that port is still useful to 10W 5V 2A devices. So 9V 2A PD and 9V 2A IQ2 - merge these. Then you have a port which can support different device types.
You will then have IQ3 in larger 100W, medium 45W and smaller 30W, each of these shares power across say 4 ports in 100W, 3 ports in 45W and 2 ports in 30W.
Can you make that happen?
Do the same with Powercore, 26800mAh / 100Wh is a common maximum flight limit, so it has a safe Wattage limit, call that safe limit say 60W (might be 45W, testing will tell). Do the same intelligence there. Say 3 port 60W Powercore PD 26800. 60W to 1 port, or 60W shared to 2 ports (say 45W+15W), 60 W shared to 3 ports.
Then work down in size with the smaller, say 20000mAh has a 45W upper safe limit, 45W to 1 of its 2 ports, or 30W+15W if 2 ports.
10000mAh, If you used USB-C you still have room for 2 USB-C ports, it can be 30W to 1 port, or 18+12W if 2 ports used.
Can you make this intelligent power budget happen, an IQ3?
If you made intelligent Powerport 100W, 60W, 45W, and intelligent Powercore 60W, 45W, 30W, then when you buy and connect both, then an empty Powercore IQ3 would tend to make the most use of the Powerport budget, an empty laptop would take more budget and less left for Powercore also wanting recharging.
Indeed you could make a port fixed to be the priority port - let customer know when multiple devices want more than total budget, 1 port is given priority. As recharging a battery to charge a battery is less efficient, then you could give all the laptop’s needs 1st to recharge itself, and any remaining power budget then goes to the Powercore 2nd, as the laptop gets full, more budget is released to then go to the Powercore. Not too dissimilar to the Fusion concept of managing some batteries more priority.
You can differentiate in the market and use your product portfolio intelligently. You could for example had a IQ3 Powercore declare itself as IQ3 Powercore to your IQ3 Powerport. You know that a battery to recharge a battery is less efficiency overall, so you could give an IQ3 Powercore a lower priority to a non-IQ3 device so that non-IQ devices with batteries get 1st refusal on a power budget, then as they get full and demand less, budget is released to IQ3 Powercore. You would then offer to a consumer in this imagined IQ3 Era the maximum energy ingest possible for any given size and any given device.
Three scenarios to illustrate, here I use an IQ3 Powerport, an IQ3 Powercore and a non-IQ3 device (say a laptop).
Scenario A “does not know when the next wall socket is nearby”. This user plugs into their IQ3 Powercore to their device as a proactive measure, keep laptop charged. The laptop is hence fully charged all the time, and the IQ3 Powercore is running down, say to near empty. The wall socket then appears. The user connects a future IQ3 2-port Powerport to both IQ3 Powercore and laptop. The laptop needs little, nearly full, it probably only needs say 5W-10W to feed its current needs, you serve those needs 1st priority. The IQ3 Powercore is emptier, it can ingest energy therefore faster, it then gets nearly all of the IQ3 Powerport budget, 50-55W and it recharges quickly.
Scenario B “don’t care, don’t think”. Owner of a IQ3 Powercore and IQ3 Powerport but doesn’t think, doesn’t care, uses their laptop til it’s nearly flat, then connects IQ3 Powercore. Then uses that for a period, then the IQ3 Powercore is also now nearly flat. So then the user spots a wall socket and connects both IQ3 Powercore and laptop to IQ3 Powerport. Total required power is say 90W, but you have say 60W budget. So give the laptop 45W which is the max it asks for, for an hour or two until it asks for less than 45W. So the laptop gets priority. The IQ3 Powercore was getting less than its maximum, It could ingest at 45W but was given 15W (all the budget remaining) and then as the laptop reduced its demand, the IQ3 Powercore got more than 15W, eventually getting 45W. For that whole time, the 60W was being used from the wall, and the most device battery life was gained. A Market difference.
Scenario C: “spend the least amount of money”. User has say 30W laptop and wants to stretch the day out and spend the least total money. User buys an IQ3 30W Powerport and an IQ3 30W Powercore. User drains the device, then connects the IQ3 Powercore, then it is flat then connects to wall socket. The total budget you’d need for fastest recharge is 60W, but you got 30W. So the laptop is given 30W, the IQ3 Powercore gets nothing. As the laptop recharges it allows its input to drop to say 18W, then 12W remains and the Powercore is given budget and it then begins recharging. The laptop then becomes full and trickle charge say 10W and the IQ3 Powercore then is given 20W and speeds up its recharge.
We accept this is not easy so to make it easier some ideas:
- years ago you made different ports for different devices, a 2A and a 1A port. The modern equivalent would be "first refusal’ and “second refusal” ports.
- you could make IQ3 specific ports if intelligence is challenging initially.
- to keep size down, make USB-C your default, across the board, everything including Soundcore. Go on.
If you like this @AnkerTechnical then when you made the prototypes send them to me to test 
I got a 45W laptop, 18W tablet, 10W phone and 5W buds to test with, so send me say a 45W IQ3 Powerport, say a 10Ah IQ3 Powercore, and I will give you feedback.
nice post 
