XPS 13 9310 Charging issues with 45W PD-capable External Battery

Question

I just received my new XPS 13 9310 and I'm having issues with getting it to charge using a RAVPower PD Pioneer 20000 power bank. The power bank is capable of 45W from the USB C PD Port. The computer doesn't seem to acknowledge that it is even plugged in. The power bank light will turn on briefly when plugged in and then turn off.

I have used the power bank to charge my work laptop (a Latitude 7490), though it seems to prefer 65W (I get a notification that it is charging slowly when using the power bank).

This is the Power Bank I have:

https://www.amazon.com/Portable-RAVPower-20000mAh-High-Capacity-Compatible/dp/B082PGS78L

Any recommendations?

bikman · Accepted Answer

@jphughan thank you! I guess I need to do a better job searching the forum. @stinkypete's recommendation for a long hold of the button on the power bank did it! I had to do two long holds but now it is charging my laptop with no issues.

jphughan · Accepted Answer

@bikman  Same issue with the same system and power bank was reported here.  Seems to be an interoperability issue that affects that specific combination of power bank and system.  I have two of the same power bank model and they both work fine with everything we've thrown at them, including an XPS 13 9350, Latitude 7480, ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 2, ThinkPad T490, and ThinkPad T15.  The previous XPS 13 9300 had a number of firmware issues early in its lifecycle that caused weird issues even when using Dell docks and even for a while an inability to use simple USB-C to DP/HDMI adapters and cables, so I wouldn't be remotely surprised if this was a firmware glitch on the 9310 side.

jphughan · Answer

@bikman  Oh wow!  That's interesting that that worked.  The long press toggles the power bank between 'auto' mode and a mode that forces the power bank to try to charge from whatever it's connected to, so I'm a little bit surprised that cycling it twice resulted in different behavior compared to the initial connection.  Do you have to do that every time you connect the power bank?  (Incidentally, continuing the story I posted in that thread, I contacted RAVPower about one of my units that didn't support that toggle and they sent me a replacement that did. Very nice customer service!)

jphughan · Answer

@bikman Interesting. I'm not sure that's precisely right because when I connected mine to a wall charger, which of course wouldn't allow the power bank to provide power to it, a series of long presses always ended with the power bank continuing to receive power from the wall charger. But this makes me wish I had a USB PD Analyzer so I could see the actual messages being exchanged between these devices. Unfortunately those are rather expensive. But there isn't a pure "auto" mode. The way USB PD works, a device can basically advertise itself as one of these classes:

Provide power only
Receive power only
Can do both, but prefer to provide power
Can do both, but prefer to receive power

There are technical terms for each of those that I can't remember offhand but read in a USB PD white paper a while back. Anyhow, that's why in that other thread I linked I wrote a theory that the power bank's default initial mode is to advertise itself as "Can do both, but prefer to provide power", while the long press switches it over to "Receive power only". But of course it's just a theory since I don't have the hardware to see the USB PD message exchange. In any case, glad you've got a solution!

bikman · Answer

@jphughan If I unplug it and plug it back in immediately it still works. It seems like if it is unplugged for a while it reverts to the default and requires me to do the double long-press again. I'll pay closer attention though.

If I had to guess, it seems like it toggles it between auto-->recieve charge-->provide charge.

XPS

XPS 13 9310 Charging issues with 45W PD-capable External Battery

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