Why is laptop battery life never estimated correctly?
A common problem with laptops, tablets, and phones is that they don't know exactly how many hours of power are left or how long the device can be used before it needs to be recharged.
For example, when you hover your mouse over the battery icon on the Windows taskbar, you will see text indicating the estimated battery life (as shown in the image below) which could be 2 hours or 5 hours, then when you check the battery life again a few minutes later it has dropped to 1 hour! Even worse, the battery can run out completely and the laptop suddenly shuts down without warning.
Usually, the user buys a new battery to solve this problem, thinking that the deterioration of the old battery was the cause... This is true to some extent, but this problem can also be eliminated by a simple process called "Battery Calibration", which we will discuss in detail in another article. Now, let's focus on the factors that lead to this problem on laptops in particular.
Estimated battery life is based on your current usage.
The battery drains faster under relatively heavy use, and all your laptop has to do is monitor how quickly its battery is draining over the last few minutes and then perform complex calculations to estimate how many hours of power you have left to do your work before you need to plug in the charger.
Therefore, you will see a different number of estimated hours depending on the current resource consumption rate ( processor , hard disk, RAM , graphics card, etc.), even if the battery is 100% full.
For example, a laptop might have a battery life of up to ten hours if you lower the screen brightness a little and do nothing but browse the internet or read documents, which are light tasks that don't consume a lot of the device's resources.
On the other hand, if you turn up the screen brightness to maximum and run a game, 4K video, or a resource-intensive program, the battery life will be estimated at an hour or two at most.
It's just a computer prediction. If you see an estimate in minutes, you can make your battery last longer by doing fewer tasks. If you see an estimate in hours, don't expect your battery to last that long if you do more resource-intensive tasks like switching from browsing the web to playing a game.
Note that the battery life estimate is based not only on your real-time usage, but also on the rate at which tasks running in the background consume it. For example, Windows might install a new update in the background while you're browsing the Internet, which puts more load on the processor and drains the battery faster, resulting in a lower battery life estimate.
However, even if Windows doesn't install new updates, some websites you visit may contain auto-playing video ads - which also consume device resources without your knowledge.
All we mean from the previous lines is that the laptop makes an estimate based on the current rate of battery drain, which is why the estimated life is not 100% stable or accurate as the computer cannot predict the future, it only guesses based on the current situation.
Like all other electronic components, the condition of the battery deteriorates over time due to repeated use, which means its efficiency declines and it loses its ability to store the same amount of energy it used to.
On the other hand, the device responsible for monitoring the remaining battery capacity is unable to know the actual amount of power currently available, and as a result will give inaccurate estimates. This is precisely why the problem of the laptop suddenly turning off without warning occurs, even though Windows tells you that there is approximately 10 to 20 percent of the battery power remaining.
Laptops vary in how they estimate battery life. The idea here is that each battery has an electronic circuit inside it that informs the operating system about the battery capacity and its condition. However, if you find that your laptop suddenly shuts down while Windows was indicating 20% or 10% battery power remaining, the battery may need to be recalibrated.
It is a simple process that anyone can do, where all that is required is to completely discharge the battery to 0% and then recharge it completely to 100%. The purpose of this is not to make the battery last longer, but to help the device understand the amount of power in the battery and provide more realistic estimates. You can benefit from this topic " Calibrating the laptop battery ".
In this report you can see the “Design Capacity” which reports the original capacity of the battery since it left the manufacturer. While the “Full Charge Capacity” indicates the amount of power currently available. You will almost certainly find that the full charge capacity is less than the design capacity due to battery degradation.
On Macbooks, you can also check the battery status without installing any third-party apps. Simply hold down the Option key and click on the battery icon in the top menu bar. A drop-down menu will appear with the Condition field and an estimate of the current battery status. If it says “Normal,” that’s a good sign, but if it says “Replace Soon” or “Replace Now,” the battery is seriously degraded and needs to be replaced.
As you can see, there are many factors that make the estimated battery life not very accurate, and it is better to rely on the percentage to know how long you can use your laptop before you need to recharge the battery. But if you notice that even the percentage is incorrect, recalibrate the battery so that the device can understand exactly how much power the battery can actually store.
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