battery status time remaining is estimating, when clicking on icon

[David]

after recent update of Ubuntu 10.10 this error occured

[Karl Lattimer (karl-qdh)]

This is mostly due to buggy batteries, a working battery should only display estimating for a few moments, maybe a minute then give you a time remaining.

[Mohamed IKBEL Boulabiar (boulabiar)]

Can the percentage% be added to the battery menu ?
Every time it's needed to go through details to see it.

[Gurmeet (gurmeet1109)]

It;s not because of buggy batteries, rather buggy code.

1. Please add Brians Rogers PPA from "https://launchpad.net/~brian-rogers/+archive/power" to your sources (instructions on that page)
2. sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
3. Logout/Login or reboot.

You will start receiving battery percentage remaining. Let us know if you need further help.

[Matt Filizzi (fizzatbeyond)]

After following your instructions I have a whole different problem. Once I unplug the laptop I get about 2 seconds before the power manager informs me that the battery is critically low even though it is fully charged. I have enough time before it shuts down to see that it says the battery is 100% charged though.

As a note when fully charged (as stated above) I get approximately 1.5 hours before it should inform me that the battery is critically low.

[Jnelson11 (jnelson11)]

Im also having the same issue as Matt.

I have a Lenovo T-510 and the battery indicator frequently shows me a Red battery low icon, but I can continue to use the laptop for a few hours after that before it dies.

It happens more frequently when i go in and out of suspended mode.

[Tim Spence (yogi-wan-kenobi)]

I'm having the same issue as Matt and Jnelson11.

I running a Lenovo T-420 and Mint (Katya) w/ 2.6.38-8-generic kernel. I get up to eight hours of unplugged operation between charges. I don't think it's a buggy battery. According to acpi:

tim@cthulhu:~$ /usr/bin/acpi -V
Battery 0: Discharging, 50%, 03:04:26 remaining
Battery 0: design capacity 8538 mAh, last full capacity 8517 mAh = 99%
Adapter 0: off-line
Thermal 0: ok, 43.0 degrees C
Thermal 0: trip point 0 switches to mode critical at temperature 98.0 degrees C
Cooling 0: LCD 4 of 15
Cooling 1: Processor 0 of 10
Cooling 2: Processor 0 of 10
Cooling 3: Processor 0 of 10
Cooling 4: Processor 0 of 10

After re-waking from a suspend, I get a red battery icon regardless of how well charged the battery is. Fortunately the power manager does not shut down my laptop. Even though the battery icon is red, clicking the indicator will display a battery life that seems accurate.

In a nutshell, it seems that the percentage remaining is calculated incorrectly, causing the indicator color to show critical even when acpi confirms the remaining battery life is adequate.