Battery on my laptop was always fine, seemed to charge up to 90% or so. I use the laptop plugged in the whole time. It;s an older HP Spectre 360. One day recently the plug was not fully in the charger and it went down to 25% or so - I only noticed because the screen was blanking out after a few minutes, since it was technically on battery and not AC power. After recharging it, it went up to 89%, and stayed there. After a few days, I noticed the top value was then 88%. I left it plugged in and the laptop closed for a couple of days and now the top level is 86%.
I think this might be a hardware issue as I’ve tried booting into live USB sessions of other distros (Fedora 41 gnome, Mint 22, Ubuntu 24.10) and get the same battery percentage. Does anyone know if this is fixable by software (I had it on performance, just changed to balanced, but again it’s on AC power the whole time, even though it says “not charging”) or is it the battery/charger? Battery health is reported at 100%. 86% is fine for now, but trying to get ahead of problem before it fails.
I seen this many times on my laptops when it gets the final run and it slowly degenerate to 0% I can see in 3-4 months my latest hardware battery was good status with 85% health and now it is only 40% health so today took it to shop to change battery and thermals with deep clean same time saving time for me
Just to rule something out, check the laptop BIOS settings to see if there are any battery saving or longevity settings. Some laptops will automatically limit the maximum battery charge to maintain the health of the battery.
Some laptops will have the ability to set that using software, like Lenovo ThinkPad laptops.
Thanks - just checked the BIOS and there isn’t anything specific other than “system power scheme”, which was set to performance - I changed it to balanced. After rebooting it still comes up in the KDE power and battery panel as “not charging” and 86%, with a battery health of 100%.
On my Framework Laptop 16, it usually sits around 80-85% state of charge with 100% battery life (I’ve only had it for 6 months). I know on my ThinkPad T14 Gen3, there is the option to set the thresholds manually. It’ll normally be set to start charging at around 70% and stop charging at 85%. If I know I’ll need to use the laptop on the go, I’ll bump up the stop charging to 95% and bring it down after I come back. Thankfully, the laptop charges from USB Power Delivery, so I can trickle charge it from an external battery pack or phone charge as needed.
It’s usually best not to leave batteries constantly at > 90% state of charge as that can shorten the battery’s life over time.
That’s kind of what I’m hoping. I’d be fine if it stayed at 70-80%, especially as i use it plugged in - my only concern is whether it will keep decreasing beyond that and then eventually fail, and if that;s in a year or so or in a month…
If the charge start and stop thresholds can be configurable, you might be able to set them manually by updating the corresponding charge_start_threshold and charge_stop_threshold values under /sys/class/power_supply/BATx (replacing BATx with the proper number.
Normally, KDE would expose those settings that if it is configurable, but that may not always be the case.
Thanks - i don’t see charge_start_threshold or charge_stop_threshold, but I do see capacity and capacity_level: capacity is set to 86 (not sure if that’s just a readout from the current value or not) and capacity_level to normal. There is also charge_full and charge_full_design, both set to 4000000.
The batteries in laptops are not meant to remain on AC power constantly.
To maintain battery health and longevity the user should periodically (probably at least once a week) run the laptop on battery until it shows 10 - 15% remaining then recharge to 100%. Rinse and repeat frequently.
A battery that remains at 100% charge will gradually lose capacity and shorten its life.