Is Your Notebook Battery Losing Life Fast? It Might Not Be a Battery Problem

I don't get it about the voltage. I think that voltage is the default for the battery, AFAIK the wear problem doesn't affect voltages...

RMA should not be difficult, you should call your local ASUS service point (the phone # is on the warranty card the one shaped like a credit card and with the purple bars, at least in Europe) and explain the problem. You can also just send in the battery and get a new one.

The shipping will be arranged by them so you don't need to worry about that.

Yes, i suggest you get the batt before its warranty expires.

The wear problems will not go away, not even with a V1S battery. They might become lighter though (the V1S battery wear is "resettable" in some cases)

 

Hi Guys,

I own a F9s, I did discharge the battery downto 7% do you think i should disable the alarm and try to drain it much lower?

I got 2:20 hrs on my F9s with 7 % still remaining and my attery wear level is 0% Right now!..

Any sugessions??

 

Wait, are you suffering from the wear problem? The F9S is not a model where this problem is confirmed. And you do not have wear either. What is exactly the problem you are trying to solve?

"I got 2:20 hrs on my F9s with 7 % still remaining and my attery wear level is 0% Right now!.. "

Do you mean you got 2:20 from 100% to 7%? That would be normal. Or 2:20 after it was at 7% and you disabled the alarms? That would not be normal.

 

EBE, i would need more out of the battery? I ment can i get out of the battery running it below 7%?

 

You will get around 10 more minutes until completely drained. I suggest you don't run it to below 3-4% though, that might damage it.

 

ok i would take tat sugession.. ummm..this seems to problem common with all asus laptops/batteries/what ever u call it!!

 

What problem?? You have no problem at all as far as I understand it.

Your battery discharged to 7%. Then you recharged it. No wear. I ask you again, what is the problem you are trying to solve? Because I don't see it.

 

ok to be frank.. i have a so called ultra portable.. i do not like 2:20 hrs of battery life on a 6 cell battery.. period.. i want more juice out of ma battery without wearing it down.. period.

 

Hi all!
I really liked the amount of info. on this subject and wanted to input some of what I have been experiencing. I have a Dell e1505 that I bought sept.2006, ever since about couple of months ago I have been noticing that the life of the battery will only give me bout 10-15min. on light uses of browsing, wifi, doc.
It kept getting worse until one day the computer stopped recognizing that a battery exist to begin with. the funny part is if I unplug AC cord I can use the battery fine but the computer thinks its running off of the AC cord but the screen dimming that I have done for my battery profile kicks in, which confuses the heck out of me.......The laptop doesnt recognize a battery yet it knows enough to change profiles and dim the screen when my AC cord is unplugged. What's even more interesting is, ever since the computer stopped recognizing a battery existed, I have been getting much more life out of the battery and it would last prolly around 30-45min. or so, I didn't time it exactly yet but it was in that ball park. any suggestions?

 

Hey everyone, I am writing this as I am running the battery life test. I am currently at the 75min mark (when the battery meter was activated I only got barely 15min.) watchin online videos, browsing, screen dimmed to lvl 3 and wifi. I can't believe that my battery actually had this much power left in it and I almost bought a new one. My only problem currently is I never know when the power will go out since there is no warning obviously and I have no idea why the OS doesn't recognize that there is a battery in the battery bay to begin with. but somehow knows the AC is unplugged by switching to battery profile?

 

Heheh now I see. Unfortunately, that is the typical battery life of an ASUS notebook nowadays, ultraportable or not. I could chide you for not doing your research before buying but I won't, it's not your fault, I agree that an computer that is advertised to be portable should have better battery life.

Unfortunately there is nothing for you to do except buy a spare battery. Or perhaps if you have a 6-cell and there is a 9-cell available, get that one, it'll give you a 40-50% boost of batt life. Or if your notebook has a hotswappable bay, get a batt for that one but I think you have an F model right? Those don't have it...

Hi, I think that indeed there is some miscommunication between the batt firmware and the computer, in your case. I wouldn't bet that it's the ASUS battery wear bug, though, it's something similar.

What I suggest is disable the alarms, run the computer until it shuts down, record the time, and approximate the batt lifetime afterwards so that you plug the computer in before the battery is actually completely drained (that might damage it).

 

In my opinion this is not an "Asus" problem per se. but it includes other manufacturers too. I am currently trying to get some of my other friends to run similar tests to see if they come up with the same thing. especially when Macs have battery that last for more than three years with respectable power but Windows based laptops have to get their batteries changed like diapers on babies........About your suggestion, that is exactly what I did to measure the battery power and I got 80min. in total a big difference from my 15min. I got back when the windows battery meter was working.

P.S: in my case whether I disable the alarm or not, it doesnt make a difference since the laptop stopped recognizing the battery to begin with.

 

If your computer doesn't recognize the battery at all, you don't have the Asus battery problem. If the computer isn't recognizing the battery you have hardware problems with either the battery or computer most likely.

 

Great Stuff, Thanks!!!

 

The problem is the OS or ACPI because when I unplug the computer switches to battery, so there is a connection and all circuits are fine.

 

Ive the exact same problem my e1505 lasts around 15-20mins on battery and sometimes refuses to accept that a battery even exists in it, yet most programs report it has a full charge (67583mAh) but from my tests it seems the battery is charging upto 4000mAh then just stopping and jumping to 67583mAh reporting that its 100% full.
Ive a log of the charge cycle if anyone wants to see exactly what i mean

by my math
mAh / Power draw = battery life
and it pulls around 18v of power
4000mAh / 18 = 19.44 mins

which is about the battery life im getting now
critical alarm is disabled and the core clocked down to 1ghz

 

Try to disable the critical Alarm for the battery and you'll see a great improvement in battery power. I had the same problem and after it stopped being recognized, the battery lasted me 1:20min.

 

Yeah, these are all battery firmware bugs, or ACPI driver bugs -- we've never been able to determine exactly what. They are related but we can't be sure they are the same thing / or the same bugs... Because we're not driver/firmware programmers, don't have a way to read the code and disassemble it, nor do we feel like doing it

Problem is, it seems the manufacturers don't want to determine where the bugs are, and fix them, either.

 

Hi again.
I tested calibrations and now I have also wrong full capacity in battery.
I disabled critical level shutdown and I check how long it will stay on.

Some info of LI-ION and LI-POLY batteries
Max cell voltage 4.2 V (Full charge)
Nominal cell voltage 3.7 V (Most of the time)
Min cell voltage 3.2 V (Recommended min voltage. Used in GSM)
Cutoff cell voltage 2.6 V (Protection circuit will cutoff cells from device)

Edit:
Now running 50 min (disabled 5% critical shutdown. Remaining capacity 24500mWh)
When I start testing it was 15 min max before himbernating.

Edit 2:
70 min with hiperformance and video trought WLAN. V1jp will himbernate (Critical level shutdown off) at about 12800mV (3.2V/Cell) and NHC tells 10 000 mWh remain capacity. NHC told about 18 minutes to shutdown. Battery age about 11 months.

I think that remaining 10 000 mWh is my battery wear

 

Hi Guys,

I have a 2 year OLD HP dv2002 with a Core Solo processor. The battery lasted just for 1 hour at the maximum. I always had this problem with the battery since i never knew at that time that i need to calibrate the battery but now!!! i just disabled the critical alarm and let the laptop run!!

at 6% it was hoberring for around 30 minutes and at 0% it was still running for a long time!! probably for another 1 hr!!!

could you guys tell me which is a good software to check the battery wear...

 

So did you try to calibrate it? If you didn't, try, and see if the meter reads properly after that.

For batt wear I use MobileMeter in Windows XP (it's quite old but it works well); RMClock in Vista.

 

How does MobileMeter tell you about battery wear? I've tried the calibration tips in this thread, but no matter what I do, I still encounter instances where the battery life goes from 50% down to 0% abruptly without warning.

 

In the Battery tab of the Right Click, Properties menu (or smth similar).

If it goes from 50% to 0% w/o warning but you can still use the battery for 1+ hour after the 0% mark, it really does sound like the ASUS battery wear bug. What computer is this that you are talking about, again?

 

Its a Compaq Presario 2800. Antique, really... but still running strong since the day I bought it. Unfortunately, the left screen hinge cracked today, so I need to be really careful when I open the screen so the crack doesnt propagate to the right.

 

Interesting... I have an M1210 that rapidly deteriorated to ~5 minutes of battery life after a year. My BIOS claims I need a new battery. I guess I'll try disabling the critical setting.