Yrurtj

My Lenovo ThinkPad T61 is rather old, and a couple of years ago I had to replace the battery as the old one was dead. Now the replacement battery seems like dying a slow death, but I get conflicting data from xfce4-power-manager. So I'm wondering if there is a way to check whether the battery is healthy.

The symptoms are as follows:

• The power manager indicates that the battery is fully charged
  


• If I disconnect the AC charger, then the battery status jumps to 47% or similar in less than 5min


• And in less than 15min the laptop runs out of juice and shuts down

I tried to check upower data:

root@malou-laptop:/home/liv# upower --enumerate

/org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/line_power_AC

/org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0

root@malou-laptop:/home/liv# upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0

  native-path:          /sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/PNP0A08:00/device:00/PNP0C09:00/PNP0C0A:00/power_supply/BAT0

  vendor:               SANYO

  model:                92P1137

  serial:               885

  power supply:         yes

  updated:              Wed 19 Feb 2014 09:35:37 PM CET (23 seconds ago)

  has history:          yes

  has statistics:       yes

  battery

    present:             yes

    rechargeable:        yes

    state:               fully-charged

    energy:              70.38 Wh

    energy-empty:        0 Wh

    energy-full:         72.42 Wh

    energy-full-design:  71.28 Wh

    energy-rate:         26.561 W

    voltage:             12.4 V

    percentage:          97.1831%

    capacity:            100%

    technology:          lithium-ion

I also looked at ACPI data:

root@malou-laptop:/home/liv# cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/info 

present:                 yes

design capacity:         71280 mWh

last full capacity:      72420 mWh

battery technology:      rechargeable

design voltage:          10800 mV

design capacity warning: 3621 mWh

design capacity low:     200 mWh

cycle count:          0

capacity granularity 1:  1 mWh

capacity granularity 2:  1 mWh

model number:            92P1137

serial number:             885

battery type:            LION

OEM info:                SANYO

root@malou-laptop:/home/liv# cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state 

present:                 yes

capacity state:          ok

charging state:          charged

present rate:            0 mW

remaining capacity:      70380 mWh

present voltage:         12400 mV

But I cannot pinpoint anything suspicious: the design capacity and last full capacity seem healthy to me.

So is there some other utility that could indicate whether the battery is working as expected, or needs replaced?

I don't know why you're looking for corroborating evidence from the system, when you have solid empirical evidence. The battery won't hold a charge. Period, end of story.

I'd be happier if I saw a high charge cycle count. Lithium ion isn't good for more than about 500 charge cycles.

Another datum, which won't appear in the places you've been looking, is how much of the laptop's usage life on this new battery has been while plugged in, and whether it's frequently gone through a full discharge/charge cycle.

Too many people use laptops as if they were small desktops, leaving them plugged in most of the time. This is not healthy for the battery. The analogy I like to use is that a toy balloon will last longer if you blow it up only part way, rather than blow it up as far as it can go and leave it there. A full charge on the battery increases some of the stresses on it.

You can also check the battery health by using the inxi tool with this command :

$ ./inxi -Bx

Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 38.7 Wh condition: 40.3/47.5 Wh (85%) model: PA5109U-1BRS status: Discharging 

and check the condition value.