Any help for recent weird battery behavior?

[Dirigent82]

Recently, on my i5 SP3, when I unplug it and start using it, within 5 minutes the battery indicator drops to 93%. What would be causing it drop that quickly? It never used to do that. It would normally drop after about 30 minutes.

Any suggestions??

 

[gpobernardo]

Two possibilities:
1. Batteries age, and the wear-and-tear is even faster if you frequently subject the battery to high levels of charge differences, e.g. if you let the charge drop to 20% and then charge it back up to 100%.
2. As a consequence, batteries often lose their calibration causing erroneous battery level readings.

Two suggestions:
1. Leave it alone. As long as your device is working, there is no need to worry about that minor detail.
2. Calibrate your battery by draining it all the way to 0% and then charging your device - although I don't recommend this since battery calibration also takes a toll on battery life.

 

[Dirigent82]

Two possibilities:
1. Batteries age, and the wear-and-tear is even faster if you frequently subject the battery to high levels of charge differences, e.g. if you let the charge drop to 20% and then charge it back up to 100%.
2. As a consequence, batteries often lose their calibration causing erroneous battery level readings.

Two suggestions:
1. Leave it alone. As long as your device is working, there is no need to worry about that minor detail.
2. Calibrate your battery by draining it all the way to 0% and then charging your device - although I don't recommend this since battery calibration also takes a toll on battery life.

Thanks for your reply. My SP3 is under a year old and I don't think I have subjected it to undue strain. I would hope the battery wouldn't age this quickly, but I suppose it's possible. It could be erroneous readings, the battery indicator has never been a bastion of accuracy.

It only concerns me because the battery decrease ends up being about 20%/hour. Which is not good. The device works fine, but that type of battery depletion isn't normal. I could try calibrating the battery to see if it helps.

Thanks for your thoughts!

 

[gpobernardo]

It could be erroneous readings, the battery indicator has never been a bastion of accuracy.

Spot on!

You're welcome. Let us know what you find after calibration - I hope it works.

P.S. - more on Battery Indicator weirdness:
There have been a lot of user reports about even weirder battery indicator behavior. From my own experience with my L1020, for example, right now it's charged to 100%. If I decide to change my phone region settings and restart, it will boot up with only around 60-70% charge remaining. But when I bring it back to my previous phone regional setting, the battery indicator will go back up to ~95% - all that while the phone is not plugged to a charger! On a separate instance, if I decide to charge my phone after changing my phone region settings, it will jump from the said 60-70% boot-up charge to 100% in less than five minutes!