Anker batteries used to allow passthrough charging, where you could charge your Anker and your device at the same time (albeit with the Anker charging at a slower rate). This option was later removed in order to help improve the life and reliability of the Anker batteries.
Is passthrough charging something you wish Anker would bring back or would you never use it?
I like the idea of it but I don’t think I would ever use it. If you wanted to charge both at the same time I would buy the PowerPort 2.
I dont see the point why they would include that. You can charge ypur powerbank and your device separately
what @Sjpower124 said.
Once decent dual-port mains chargers came out, just use one of them and plug in your battery and your mobile into the 2 ports. Done.
The electronics for active charging are more complicated it adds weight and cost and you look those batteries now look quite dated with small capacities and expensive.
Anker did right to drop it.
i dont see much of a point, dual port chargers and such remove the need. id rather have safer/faster charging over passthrough
One place I would use passthrough would be in my car. My car power turns off when the car does. If I have the 2 plugged in separately, nothing charges as soon as the ignition is off. Having the phone active the whole trip means it increases in charge slowly when charging, and drains quickly when not. So it’s hard to arrive with the phone at 100%. If I disconnect the battery pack from the car, and plug the phone in it instead, the phone will be at 100% on arrival, but the battery pack will be drained…
Passthrough is super handy. It helps create a buffer of energy, especially places where electricity is not reliable (3rd world countries) it can act like a UPS of sorts. I’m a fan of passthrough but I do understand the life of the batteries will be significantly reduced due to the heat and discharge and charge cycle.
If passthrough is done right, it shouldn’t harm the batteries. When a device is connected to the output, the circuit should route power directly from the input to the output, essentially parallel to the circuitry that charges the power pack and provides power from the power pack to the output. Depending on how good the circuitry is, there should be some load balancing, allowing the power pack to charge properly, if at a slower rate, while used in passthrough.
I don’t know if the earlier anker packs actually were set up this way, they may have just happened to function with both input and output connected, while not intended for that use, and so put a heavy load on the circuitry and cells.
Passthrough can be useful but there’s been a rise in the popularity of compact multi-port chargers (from Anker and other brands), so I think it’s less important these days.
Dual port car chaget?
I have a dual port car charger. I even now have a 4 port car charger from anker. The issue is that a car charger stops working if the ignition is turned off in many newer cars. At that point, the battery pack is doing nothing, and the phone’s charge is going down. I then have to disconnect the phone from the car charger, connect it to the battery pack, and remember to put it back when the car is started back up.
On a long trip, it would be a lot simpler to have a pack with passthrough.
Sounds like you have a phone problem, it should last a long time when car power off.
You could just own 2 batteries and have one plugged into the phone, the one charging off the car, and just swap batteries.
The pass-thru batteries, have you actually looked at their mah and their prices? Two non-passthru batteries often is more capacity and less cost than one passthru.
I would likely just charge them both in different outlets
the only thing I bought it for is the passthrough charging. after reading several reviews I decided to buy it because I NEED the passthrough. now I found that the product doesn’t support it. thank you very much!
think twice before removing a feature from a product. I’m not going to buy any Anker anymore.
Hi @Yakov_Karnygin,
Sorry to hear that! Anker doesn’t support passthrough charging on many of its batteries in order to help protect the battery life (charging and discharging the battery at the same time significantly reduces it’s lifespan). The new PowerCore Fusion does support passthrough charging as it has special built-in battery management circuitry.
At any rate, all Anker purchases can be returned within 30-days for any reason. Please reach out to support@anker.com and they’ll be happy to make things right!
Why was my post flagged??? Because I critizised Anker products in it?
Hi @mork_vom_org, sorry to hear that your post was flagged by someone. We definitely respect your ideas, but we also feel your post is so weird. See the fonts? 
I see absolutely no reason as to why anyone would flag your post.
It could be useful if a solar panel prioritized 1 port more than another so you’d plug in your device in the priority port and if there’s excess energy then it would give the excess to the lower priority port.
The Powercore Fusion is in effect prioritizing the external delivery to internal recharging.
Prioritization is more efficient because to charge a battery to charge a battery will lose energy so charging say a phone 1st and then it isn’t able to take all that’s possible to then charge say a Powercore on the lower priority, would accomplish the same outcome as passthru.
So you don’t unflag unjustly flagged posts due to formatting problems? Stange. For me, it’s the substance that matters, not the superficial.
As I did not find a way to edit my post for conventinal font selection, I will repost it:
I need passthrough so bad.
I am a fan of foldable solar chargers. I own 10 of them, including an 14W Anker (which has the worst claimed to real watt ratio by the way, just outputs 7W. My Kingsolar 14W, same size, outputs 10W, tested with electronic load) and have a solar backpack. My backpack is nice, has a usb plug in the shoulder strap, so the powerbank inside a side pocket can charge my phone in my jaket pocket.The backpacks solar panel is meant to be connected to the powerbank too. It has to have passthrough charging.
I also have tons of powerbanks, some claim to be passthrough capable. Not a single one is usable for my application. All of them just have a makeshift-passthrough. Using solar chargers directly to charge phones, you get lotS of problems when clouds come. My phone permanently plays the charge- nocharge-song. Annoying. Lots of phones dont even restart powerful charging once the chargecurrent dropped. So it makes ton`s of sense to put a powerbank between it, so it gets the full, uninterrupted Amps the powerbank delivers while the solar input just helps.
NONE, I repeat NONE of my 20 powebanks support solar operation. It`s so annoying. Goalzero Flip 10 and 20: So praised and from the solar specialist, but behave jut like a cheap, non-passthrough-capable easyacc6400.
It is always the same: Use a powerful charger to charge the powerbank and the phone gets charged reasonably well at way lower voltage than in no-passthrough mode. But if you use a 400mA solar charger, or a powerful one in clouds, not a single one of my socalled “passthrough”-banks delivers a mA more than the solar panel delivers at the input. So when the sun is covered, the output collapses, Powerbanks reset, the charge-nocharge song is played all the time. It is actually better if you dont use those makeshift-claim-to-be-passthrough powerbanks and charge the phone directly.
My Anker PB-AS004 doesnt help as it only has 12V input.
All other Ankers like PowerCore 5000mAh Powerbank or the bigger 20000+ one don`t work as well. And those super-hyped “Solar specialist” goal zero units perform really abysmal in this regard despite the hefty pricetag.
Please, please be the first and only powerbank manufacturer with a true solar passthrough powerbank on offer. Make one. One that charges my phone with stable 2A and 5,1V while being charged from a 200mA panel.
And it IS possible to make one. I have modified a cheap chinese powerbank, I just added a chréap separate, TP5000, 1500mA Charging pcb parallel to the stepup and it works like charm. You have additional losses, ok, as the charge current goes through the tps with the losses due to efficiency, and then gets transformed up again with additional losses by the original stepup. But It delivers superstable passthrough operation with full output voltage and amps, and thats much more important for me than 5% more loss.
I cannot take my own unit with me on airplanes, i’ ll get problems with security, so i still need a factory-build.