After a complete discharge laptop battery charge percentage showing 100% all the time

Support
,
1

So I was reading PDFs at the library and there was no socket to charge the laptop.

After the charge percentage dropped below 38%, the laptop suddenly beeps and turns off. The last thing I saw was 0% on the battery icon and then 100%.

Then returning home after 20 minutes, I plugged in the laptop without starting it. After around 1 hour when the battery-full LED indicator turned on, I disconnected the charger and opened it after a while. Since then, the battery is showing 100% charge.

Here’s a fun thing: It is showing 100%, but when I plug in the charger it shows 99% and charging, when I unplug it, it shows 98% but after around 10 seconds it again shows 100% and doesn’t change.

What can I do now? A binary state(100% or 0%) of battery percentage wouldn’t be pleasant at all.

output of `inxi -B` 
inxi -B
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 38.7 Wh (100.0%) condition: 38.7/48.3 Wh (80.0%
output of `upower -d` 
upower -d
Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/line_power_AC0
  native-path:          AC0
  power supply:         yes
  updated:              Mon 02 Oct 2023 05:19:21 PM +06 (449 seconds ago)
  has history:          no
  has statistics:       no
  line-power
    warning-level:       none
    online:              no
    icon-name:          'ac-adapter-symbolic'

Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0
  native-path:          BAT0
  vendor:               OEM
  model:                AC14B8K
  power supply:         yes
  updated:              Mon 02 Oct 2023 05:26:31 PM +06 (19 seconds ago)
  has history:          yes
  has statistics:       yes
  battery
    present:             yes
    rechargeable:        yes
    state:               discharging
    warning-level:       none
    energy:              38.655 Wh
    energy-empty:        0 Wh
    energy-full:         38.655 Wh
    energy-full-design:  48.3 Wh
    energy-rate:         3.855 W
    voltage:             15.631 V
    charge-cycles:       N/A
    time to empty:       10.0 hours
    percentage:          100%
    capacity:            80.0311%
    technology:          lithium-ion
    icon-name:          'battery-full-symbolic'
  History (rate):
    1696245991  3.855   discharging
    1696245961  12.030  discharging
    1696245931  4.035   discharging
    1696245901  3.990   discharging

Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/DisplayDevice
  power supply:         yes
  updated:              Mon 02 Oct 2023 05:26:31 PM +06 (19 seconds ago)
  has history:          no
  has statistics:       no
  battery
    present:             yes
    state:               discharging
    warning-level:       none
    energy:              38.655 Wh
    energy-full:         38.655 Wh
    energy-rate:         3.855 W
    charge-cycles:       N/A
    time to empty:       10.0 hours
    percentage:          100%
    icon-name:          'battery-full-symbolic'

Daemon:
  daemon-version:  1.90.0
  on-battery:      yes
  lid-is-closed:   no
  lid-is-present:  yes
  critical-action: PowerOff
2

Laptop batteries have internal circuitry to manage and calibrate their state as well as pass this information to the os. In order for this to function properly they need to be calibrated and occasionally re-calibrated. The basic idea is to let your laptop battery ‘know’ what’s 100% and what’s 0%. Either check with your laptop manufacturer or, if you can’t find any info there follow these steps:

  • Charge the battery overnight or 10h with the laptop switched off

  • Unplug power adapter and switch laptop on. Go to your power and display settings and disable all energy saver options eg:

    • NEVER “Turn display off after”
    • CHECK “Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off”
    • UNCHECK or NEVER “Put hard disks to sleep after”
    • UNCHECK “Slightly dim the display while on battery power”

  • Let the laptop sit in this state (light use is ok, heavy use isn’t) until it shuts down and leave it shut down for at least 5 hours or overnight. This will ensure the battery is completely drained of energy.

  • Plug the computer back in until the battery is 100% charged. You can use it during this time and you can restore your energy saver settings.

After this is done the output of:
inxi -B
will show correct info of charge and condition of your battery. Keep in mind that a healthy battery should show a condition of at least 90-95%, if your reading of 80% doesn’t change after re-calibrating then your battery is probably on it’s way out.

1 Like
3

Thank you for your response and suggestions.

I’ll do this in 2/3 days and will let you know.

upd:
@6x12
two questions: after charging it 10h or overnight, while doing “let the laptop sit in this state”, can I charge it for some time? can I shutdown for some time?

4

No, that’s the stage where you “let your laptop battery ‘know’ what’s 0%”, no switching off, no recharging, no ‘power saving’, you want to run it down as much as possible. Normally it will switch off at around 5%. At the last stage stop working on it, just let it sit.

If you’re worried that this will eventually crash your manjaro installation, and it will, you can do this stage while running a manjaro live usb. Again, all power saving features of the live usb should then be set to ‘off’.

5

If you’re worried that this will eventually crash your manjaro installation, and it will, you can do this stage while running a manjaro live usb.

Just to be clear, If I don’t use live USB in that step, would that cause me to re-install Manjaro again? because, I can’t afford a fresh installation at this particular time.

6

No, it shouldn’t, however, people on the forum warn that crashing Manjaro is to be avoided. I myself have never experienced any problems and I live in places where powercuts are common but in order to avoid any risk I added the option to do the run-down to 0% using a live usb.

Since you have to ask I strongly recommend using that option. Your fairly low capacity battery doesn’t seem to be in a newish condition so it probably won’t take more than a couple of hours max, so better safe than sorry.

1 Like
7

Elon over at Tesla would probably love to hear about that!
→ With all seriousness aside, naturally.

8

it worked, thank you.

feel free to share any tips regarding batrery health.

1 Like
9

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