Battery wear for UMPCs can be harsh

Rodfather shot me an e-mail yesterday asking about the wear on his Samsung Q1P battery; he wrote up a great post to share the wear levels and run times on both his 3-cell and 6-cell batteries. His original battery is at 57% wear level and his six-month old 6-cell battery is showing 28% wear; both measurements were provided by Notebook Hardware Control (NHC), a free and highly recommended utility.

I just checked my 6-cell battery since I use it all the time; in fact, I can't find the 3-cell! ;) I bought my extended battery back in February of this year and it rarely leaves my UMPC. Using NHC, my extended battery shows a wear level of 32%. You can see that this diminishes the maximum storage capacity of the battery and I can see that in my day-to-day use. I was originally getting a good five hours of use from this battery but now it tops out around four hours in a best-case scenario. This is a good reminder to calibrate or refresh the battery every month; I'm usually good about that, but it's been a while. I'm setting an Outlook reminder right now...what kinds of wear levels are you seeing?

Comments

[vm-01]

My original Q1 battery gets about 10 minutes of battery life now. I remember trying to refresh t when it was giving 30 minutes but that didn't seem to do a thing to help.

[Bruno]

How do you refresh or calibrate a battery?

[Rico]

Yeah, how do you calibrate the battery?

[Andreas]

Me too: How do you calibrate? ;-)

[Nick]

1. Check that the system is on AC power (see 1. above)
2. Switch off the system
3. Leave the system overnight (8 hrs) to charge
4. Switch on the system and check that the system is still on AC power (see above).
5. In Control Panel - Performance and Maintenance - Power Options, and change the Power Scheme to Always On. Then change the 'Running on Batteries' settings to all say 'Never' and click on 'OK'.
6. Click on the Power Meter tab, and check that the battery is at 100%.
7. Now remove the AC adaptor plug and switch off the AC adaptor power at the mains supply.
8. Time how long the system remains powered. You can use a utility to log the time to the hard disk at regular intervals (see Other Useful Articles below).
9. After the system has switched itself off (usually by a self-controlled 'Shutdown'), connect the AC adaptor again and switch on the power to recharge the battery.
10.
Leave for 8 hrs to fully recharge.

For more information visit
http://www.rm.com/Support/TechnicalArticle.asp?cref=TEC49012

[jkkmobile]

there is a calibration option at bios....

btw. my amteks dont have no issues with wear.. over 1 year old batts still 100%... maybe this is due q1s higher density batts.

[Rodfather]

I try to calibrate the battery every 1 or 2 months too. I'm not sure if it helps or what. When I notice the wear level jump up, I calibrate the battery. Sometimes it goes back down to where it was and sometimes it'll get worse.

[Anton P. Nym]

I'm showing similar wear levels on my Samsung Q1 batteries. I replaced the original 3-cell when it reached 52% wear after a year's heavy use and no conditioning; the Mugen Power one I bought to replace it is actually still showing 0% wear after roughly two months of light use and only one conditioning.

My heavyweight 6-cell is showing 36% wear after 9 months of heavy use and few conditionings; I'm charging it up right now for a calibrating run tonight.

-- Steve