Questions about the battery

[MrConfusion]

Hello,

So, I seem to really have fixed all my charging/battery reporting related issues now.

Even the LED I salvaged from a mobile phone and stuck on the motherboard works fine (though a bit brighter than other LEDs, but that can be fixed easily in hardware, maybe also fixable in software).

Now the only thing not working in my Pandora is the knob and I'm still going to mess with that a bit later, when I have time...

Now that I get accurate reports from the battery there are things I'm wondering about. Probably OK stuff, but I'm simply not "getting" them. I want to make sure everything is OK, hence this post.

(Edit: before depleting, I had also charged fully, so this was really supposed to be a 100% --> 0.0000something% --> 100% cycle)

I depleted the battery fully last night.

Yes, I know it can be a bit stupid to do that, because then the Pandora has problems booting, but I was prepared to charge the battery manually for a while to kickstart it. Did not even need to do that: I left the Pandora attached to the charger and when I came back to check some hours later it was already happily charging .

I then charged the battery to the max with the Pandora, meaning: charged until the Pandora stopped charging it.

It is a new battery. I have charged it overall maybe 2-4 times since receiving my Pandora. And this is the first time I charged from totally empty state. Hard to say how full it has been earlier, because I could not get those reliable readings. Because of that, I ran quite a bit directly from the poweradapter so I would not accidentally ruin the battery while fixing my Pandora.

Now SystemInfo estimates I have 15 hours of use time and Wifi is on, so this looks very OK and in line with what I've heard here it's supposed to be (better, even... but I'm not running any powerhungry software right now).

After charging, it said battery was at 101% of full capacity, now dropped to 99.9% of full. OK... SysInfo is clearly geek oriented and borderline scientific in it's reporting... which is excellent stuff .

Then, in gray, it says: full=89.8349 % of design. This is a bit less than just a day or so ago, when I think it said 91% or something? But possibly still within limits for a fresh battery?

However, the next value worries me: "After 0 recharge cycles". Should this increase? Since I just depleted fully and charged fully, should I not have at least that 1 recharge cycle? In fact, from my own use, I think I should have at least a couple of them...?

Where does it get that from, chip in the battery itself?

 

[Binky]

I'm pretty sure the full-capacity values are wrong.

Mine has often reached 102% design = 120% full capacity or something ridiculous like that - and the battery seems fine.

 

[levi]

FWIW, discharging your unit to shutdown percentage then charging it up again is perfectly within the design of the battery and shouldn't be bad (indeed, it's something I try to do periodically for battery healh). To have trouble booting up you generally need to discharge to shutdown then leave the battery to naturally discarge over days or weeks - at shutdown the battery should be left with more than enough charge to reboot the charge circuitry.


I'm not sure what's going on with your charge cycles stat. Mine is currently at 78 cycles and I've recently reflashed, so that must be another stat it's pulling from the charge circuitry directly.

 

[MrConfusion]

FWIW, discharging your unit to shutdown percentage then charging it up again is perfectly within the design of the battery and shouldn't be bad

Yes, I specifically meant I ran it dry by preventing shutdown. At least ones initiated by an OS. Anyway, no harm done .

I'm not sure what's going on with your charge cycles stat. Mine is currently at 78 cycles and I've recently reflashed, so that must be another stat it's pulling from the charge circuitry directly.

It should "follow" with the battery, really, to be of use... OK, so there might still be that one issue with my unit, but that is just really "small" compared to the other things that I already fixed. I'll keep an eye on the counter, though...

Edit: By the way, at 78 cycles, how much is your full capacity of design capacity (mAh or percentage)?

 

[levi]

It currently reckons it's at 91% of design capacity at the moment. I recall seeing it drop to 89% at one point, but it only did that breifly.

 

[MrConfusion]

It currently reckons it's at 91% of design capacity at the moment. I recall seeing it drop to 89% at one point, but it only did that breifly.

OK, thanks for this. I have 91% too and yesturday it showed 89%. so that sounds very familiar :rolleyes: .