Beware Of Fake Power Banks!

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.

 

But is this true? Who took this picture?

 

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??

 

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?

 

This is why I buy from reputable brands like Sanyo.

 

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 :

 

Another example :







128 MB flash drive inside a 500 GB portable HDD...

 

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

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!

 

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