@Silver I never charge batteries in the mod if I can help it, because I'm scared of something going wrong with the charging port. As I mentioned in one of my posts here, that happened to another friend of mine. Her mod was 6 months old and out of warranty, so bye-bye mod!
I just feel that if one pays something like R900 (the cost of the DragX) then surely it's worth it to spend a bit more and buy an external charger, instead of taking a chance and losing R900 IF the charging port goes haywire.
However, I have 3 x iJust3s and since they're internal batteries I have no choice but to charge via the mod and I've had no problems - and I've been using them for about 2 years already - maybe longer.
Anyway, as you said, this is all very interesting and we live and learn ...
Let us know how it goes with a fresh battery for your Pico, charged in the Nitecore.