X Pro 2 USB Charge

[Soloforce]

Can the X Pro 2 be charged through its Micro USB Port 

[flysurfer]

Still no.

[danwells]

It's a 7.2 volt battery, while USB is only 5 volts. The only cameras I know of that charge a 7.2 volt battery from 5 volt USB are some of the Sony interchangeable lens models, which are very slow to charge that way. They have a voltage boost circuit in the camera that allows them to do that, but it's inefficient. If the power is from the wall, it's going from 110 or 220 V AC to 5 V DC, then back up to something like 9 V DC  to charge the battery. If it's from a laptop, it's even worse - 110 or 220 V AC gets converted down to 20 or so V DC to charge the laptop battery (happens in the laptop charger - mine is 19.5 V), then that gets stored in an 18 V (or so - some small notebooks and ultrabooks may be as low as 12 volts, and a few gaming notebooks may be well over 20 volts, although my HP ZBoolk workstation is just under 20, and I'd think that's likely to be on the higher end, being a quad-core with a powerful discrete graphic chip) battery, converted down to 5 V DC on the motherboard to power the USB port, then back up to 8 or 9 V DC in the camera to charge the battery! Probably due to all the voltage conversions (and the final boost converter in the camera can't be very powerful - it's in a very constrained space, and heat is also likely to be a problem), those cameras take 4 hours or so to charge a battery that charges in 2 hours using an external charger.

 

The new USB Power Delivery standard in USB 3.1 (confusingly, huge parts of 3.1 and the Type C connector standard are optional, and you can have a Type C connector that is NOT 3.1, OR a USB 3.1 signal over a non Type C connector - what was the USB Implementers' Forum smoking?) can make this work better. A properly configured USB 3.1 Type C port can ask for 12 volts, which is great for charging 7+ volt batteries. It can even ask for 20 volts, which can charge things like laptops and big DSLRs (the Canon 1D series and Nikon D1/2/3/4/5 use 13+ volt batteries that won't charge from 12 volts).

 

The X100 series also charge from 5 volt USB, but, rather than using the complex voltage regulation of the Sonys, they simply use a 3.6 volt battery which charges just fine from a 5 volt source. I was rather surprised by this, because they seemed like "big" cameras to use a low-voltage battery (same voltage as a mobile phone).Many other fixed lens, large sensor cameras turn out to use 3.6 volt batteries as well, and they may well charge over USB. Once I found this out, my suspicion is that the distinction is that you can't stick a 3 lb 100-400mm lens on an X-100t, while the interchangeable lens series need to be ready for big lenses and their high power draw for focusing and OIS. I've never seen an interchangeable lens camera other than the tiny Pentax Q that uses 3.6 volt batteries. Rather prescient of Fuji, actually - they could have gone for 3.6 volts, since none of the initial three lenses were much bigger than the X100 lens (and they had slow focus motors).

 

Dan