Bug 47851

Summary:	Wrong battery capacity on ThinkPad t430s
Product:	ACPI	Reporter:	Peter Weber (peter.weber)
Component:	Power-Battery	Assignee:	acpi_power-battery
Status:	CLOSED INVALID
Severity:	normal	CC:	lenb
Priority:	P1
Hardware:	x86-64
OS:	Linux
Kernel Version:	3.6.0-rc5	Subsystem:
Regression:	No	Bisected commit-id:
Attachments:	.config file from my kernel dmesg from thinkpad t430s in uefi only mode output from /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/uevent lspci lsusb

Description Peter Weber 2012-09-23 15:20:30 UTC

Created attachment 80811 [details]
.config file from my kernel

Hello!
My ThinkPad battery reports to have approximately 10% more capacity than it must have by design (which is okay), but in reality the battery have nearly exactly the design capacity (which is not okay).

/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/uevent:
POWER_SUPPLY_ENERGY_FULL_DESIGN=43290000
POWER_SUPPLY_ENERGY_FULL=47620000

The problem is, that the ThinkPad powers off at 7% or 8% capacity remaining. The file /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/energy_now reports something around 3500000 mWh short before power off, which is still more than 3 Wh. I have taken a look at energy_now till power off and it doesn't "drop" during the last seconds or anything else. After power off the battery is completey empty and it is not possible to switch the ThinkPad on. Of course the Gnome-Power-Manager trusts this values and doesn't shutdown the ThinkPad.

I'm afraid the battery firmware, UEFI or the Linux kernel is doing something wrong here. I'm using the latest UEFI-Firmware from Lenovo (1.14) and boot the ThinkPad in UEFI-only mode. Kernel is a self compiled vanilla 3.6.0-rc5 with Archlinux, so everything is upstream and nearly "unpatched".

Further resources:
# Only in german. I'm not the blogger, but first comment is from me
http://eniak.info/2012/09/15/lenovo-thinkpad-t430s-mit-linux-arch-linux/
# Maybe Windows is also affected, but than their should be much more complains about this on the web?
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=106237

I'have no Windows, so I can't double check it.

Comment 1 Peter Weber 2012-09-23 15:21:22 UTC

Created attachment 80821 [details]
dmesg from thinkpad t430s in uefi only mode

Comment 2 Peter Weber 2012-09-23 15:22:24 UTC

Created attachment 80831 [details]
output from /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/uevent

Comment 3 Peter Weber 2012-09-23 15:22:46 UTC

Created attachment 80841 [details]
lspci

Comment 4 Peter Weber 2012-09-23 15:23:09 UTC

Created attachment 80851 [details]
lsusb

Comment 5 Peter Weber 2012-09-23 15:25:42 UTC

Sorry! I forgot to mention that I've discharged/recharged the battery several times completely and also used the tlp to recalibrate the battery with no success (poweroff before fullcharge starts, so no chance for tlp?).

Comment 6 Peter Weber 2012-09-25 08:36:30 UTC

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/Serious-problem-of-thinkpad-T430s-battery/m-p/873501#M67420

Seems like a bug in the (batter) firmware or battery hardware. Because Windows users are also affected. I'm sorry I didn't found this thread before, because it seems a definitely a problem of Lenovo or Panasonic.