Beware Of Fake Power Banks!

Discussion in 'General Hardware' started by Adrian Wong, Mar 12, 2013.

  1. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Power banks are very useful to keep power-hungry smartphones and tablets charged. However, we have to be very careful about buying power banks from questionable sources. As they say, if it's too good to be true, it's often too good to be true!

    This is a popular Chinese-made power bank that claims to have a storage capacity of 20,000 mAh to 30,000 mAh. Some of you may have purchased it, only to find that it doesn't have that much capacity or would only recharge your device a couple of times before dying.

    Well, if you crack it open, you might find that it only contains a single battery inside, probably NiCad, and a lot of "high-tech" sand. :p
     

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  2. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    But is this true? Who took this picture?
     
  3. Falcone

    Falcone Official Mascot Creator

    Well nothing unsual, they have been doing it since portable HDD.
     
  4. marc

    marc Team Tech ARP

    That's the power of China. LOL!

    Rumour has it that they use recycled used laptop batteries. So they really won't hold a proper charge and will tend to die off really quick! :D
     
  5. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    No idea. Found it on FB. But I've asked Marauderz to break open his powerbank which died recently.

    This is plausible because Chinese manufacturers have a history of making these fake products. Remember the fake Sony MemorySticks? And the fake Samsung external HDD? Or even better, the fake NEC factory?? :haha: :haha:
     
  6. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    I'm not saying it is not plausible, but everyone is assuming they will such thing. It could all have been a joke, and it's FB after all. No myth busting from you?
     
  7. marc

    marc Team Tech ARP

    A friend of mine happily told me he ordered a Yoobao powerbank online and was extremely happy telling me he had a great deal...

    ...until I told him about the fake issue. :mrgreen:
     
  8. weyes2013

    weyes2013 Newbie

    I don't think they had used recycled used laptop batteries. At least the big companies do not do so.
     
  9. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    This is why I buy from reputable brands like Sanyo.
     
  10. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Actually, there have been other reports of fake powerbanks, e.g. Yoobao powerbanks that look like the real things but are actually fake rip-offs. I haven't seen anyone open any of these before though.

    It is certainly possible that this is a hoax. That's why I qualified the post with a cautionary "might find". That's because even if the powerbank is fake, it may not contain sand as claimed by the original poster.

    However, considering that fake portable HDDs have been found to consist of nothing more than a flash drive inside and nuts / bolts for weight, it is certainly plausible that they may make fake powerbanks using a single battery cell and sand or other materials as dead weight.

    See these examples :

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  11. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Another example :

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    [​IMG]

    128 MB flash drive inside a 500 GB portable HDD... :wall: :wall: :wall:
     
  12. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Here are some pictures showing you how to differentiate a fake Yoobao power bank from the real stuff :

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  13. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    So far, I have yet to see anyone with such a product. No doubt there are many fake products like the powerbank, but I hardly doubt they are filled with sand. Lower quality parts yes.

    And I will definitely be able to differentiate 128MB and 500GB.
     
  14. atwl77

    atwl77 Just Started

    I believe the fake 500GB will actually show 500GB, until you actually try to write more than 128GB on it... then horrible data corruption strikes.
     
  15. Falcone

    Falcone Official Mascot Creator

    Yup. That is correct.
     
  16. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    You won't be able to, until you get back. By that time, it's too late.

    atwl77 is correct. You don't remember the fake Sony Memory Stick debacle? The fake Memory Sticks looked EXACTLY like the real stuff. The story is that the cases were manufactured in the same factory.

    Anyway, they were designed to report the correct capacity - 256 MB, for example. But it only has something like 8 MB and is set to erase or ignore whatever goes beyond that on a FIFO basis.

    So if you write a 20 MB file, only the last 8 MB would get written to the Memory Stick, and the next time you write a 4 MB file, the first 4 MB from the last write would get written out by the new 4 MB and so on.

    The file directory will still list all of the files correctly. You just cannot copy them out, or if you do, they are truncated garbage.
     
  17. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    BTW, take a look at this fake iPhone 4. It looks so real!

     
  18. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    And here's a famous con job - a fake iPhone 4S that is nothing more than a realistic iPhone 4S case with just an LED light inside!

     
  19. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    The key to avoid all these is very simple. Avoid buying from eBay, or any cheap deals on your favourite "deal" sites.
     
  20. belikethat

    belikethat Just Started

    wow that really epic con...:nuts:
     

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