Q: MacBook Pro Battery 'Service Battery' after Snow Upgrade

Hi Greg, and welcome to the forums.

The "Full charge capacity" of 2925mAh indicates that your battery is now at about 52% of its original (new) capacity of 5600mAh.

Once lithium batteries drop below about 80% of original capacity they can become unpredictable in behaviour because of increased internal resistance in the batteries as they age etc. In most cases once they have got down to the capacity that yours has reached they are liable to sudden shut downs in high power demand situations.

The new message ("Service Battery") was introduced in 10.6 to warn people that their battery may have trouble coping with such demands. (The reason you didn't see it under Leopard is simply that Leopard did not generate such a message at all).

The first steps to take if you receive this message are to reseat the battery, to reset the SMC and to try to calibrate it (i.e the stuff you have already done). If these steps don't "fix" the problem, or it recurs soon afterwards, then you should take your battery in to an Apple Service centre or store for testing.

The "98%" of charge is a different matter, and quite normal. Once the battery is "fully charged" it will not commence charging again (and will report as "fully charged") until the charge level has fallen a few percent (either 95% or 97% depending on the situation). This is done to prevent the battery undergoing deleterious almost continuous charging once the battery is full if it remains attached to the charger.

Cheers

Rod

Let me throw this into the mix. I have an original MBP (1.83 CoreDuo) that is about to celebrate its 4th birthday. I also saw the Service battery indication shortly after upgrading to SL, on a battery that was about 2 years old, but had less than 75 cycles. I had an extra battery for the computer, so I put that in, and the Service Battery indication went away for a while, but returned, with all symptoms others have mentioned (computer shutting down when the battery is >50% charged, etc.). About a month ago, reset the power monitor (or whatever it is called-I removed the battery, unplugged the computer, and held down the power button for 10 sec).Then, I put the old battery back in, and all seems normal. Battery health is about 95%, and it has been operating normally.

I'm not sure what to make of this.

Hi there,

My MBP is also facing it's 4th anniversary. A little bit more than one year ago I had to buy a new battery that did well until I plugged in my FW hardrive together with my Canon XHA1 camera without using the power chord. After that the 'service battery' warning showed up and the health dropped from somewhere in the eighties to 55%. I noticed this when I was for a convention in Boston and reading this thread decided to go visit the genius bar with the MBP. The genius ran a diagnostic program and confirmed that the battery was not well, replaced the battery *at no cost* (no official guarantee / Apple Care anymore) and the whole procedure cost me only 10 minutes! Exactly this is why I did choose for a Mac: bravo!

Cheers,

WA

Wow, I can't even begin to read this whole thread. I was hoping someone found a workaround by now. All I can add is that 10.6 has been buggy with it's battery measurements for me since day 1.

I've got a battery that is just fine and holds a nice steady full charge capacity under 10.5 (5000+mah). Under 10.6 the full charge capacity is literally all over the place and frequently reports "service battery". I've reset the SMC, and performed Apple's very time-consuming recalibration procedure multiple times.

End result: my battery is fine under 10.5, but always flaky under 10.6. 10.5's time estimate is accurate, but not 10.6's. Maybe the bug will be fixed in 10.6.4.

add me to the many people having the battery problem since installing SL!
(41 cylcles, battery age 13 month, capacity suddenly below 1000mAh, garantee expired)
*apple must do something about this problem!*

Add me into this problem.

13''Macbookpro brought in August 2009, 170 charge cycles. Now with the display of 'service battery' msg.

I consider my mac still ''new'' but already have battery problem?!

Apple! Don't ignore this! Fix!

Message was edited by: iamtamu

iamtamu, you have a completely different computer model to those being discussed in this thread with a completely different battery and different power management scheme.

Follow the standard instructions when you get a "Service Battery" warning (in your case , reset the SMC - see http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3782 ) and if this doesn't resolve the matter or the message reappears soon after, take your computer to an Apple AASP or Apple Stiore, or contact Apple Phone support, to get the battery tested, and, if necessary replaced.

You are still under warranty and Apple will, indeed, "fix it" for you if you give them the opportunity to! That's what you have a warranty for!

Cheers

Rod

the SMC under SL 10.6.3 on my MBP 3.1 behaves completely erratic!
i could "calibrate" my 1.3 year old battery (the 1st one was replaced under warranty) by setting hibernate mode to 0 (to avoid the sudden shutdown) and slowly discharge it (several hours). after recharging i got (repeatedly!):

Battery Information:

Model Information:
Manufacturer: Sony
Device name: ASMB012
Pack Lot Code: 0001
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 0110
Hardware Revision: 0500
Cell Revision: 0303
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 65337
Fully charged: Yes
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 65337
Health Information:
Cycle count: 41
Condition: Replace Now
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -1304
Voltage (mV): 12022

well, a capacity of 65337 mAh wold be the best battery ever seen. but of coarse, it was as bad as before or even worse. since the problem occurred 10 days ago, cycle count remains at 41. the only way to get rid of this erroneous message was to delete the com.apple.powermanagement.plist file. after doing this, the capacity was sown to 395 mAh.

the guy at apple care admitted the problem is known but could not guarantee that a new battery would really solve the problem. he recommended to wait with a replacement and hope for a bug fix from apple or recommendations of a new (not sony ?) battery type.

*apple please do something now!*

Message was edited by: vigaga

A battery that shows a reading of 65337 mAh is simply dead or not making a proper connection with the computer, vigaga. It indicates that it has no capacity at all ( the figure should really have a "-" before it, but system profiler doesn't provide suvch information.

Unless your battery contacts have a problem (dirty, bent, etc) , then you need a new battery, whether you pay for it yourself or whether Apple replace it.

No OS "fix" or "change" will have the slightest relevance to your own particular problem.


Rod

sorry rod, but i disagree with some of your statements:
of coarse the battery is (more or less) dead. since it still charges, contacts are not the problem.
installation of SL 10.6.x caused battery problems for many users of pre-unibody MBP's, as can be seen from the discussion forum. it *is not* my particular problem. the guy from apple care admitted, that a lot of people suddenly had such battery problems, even with quite new ones. as said, apple care (CH) does not recommend for the moment being to purchase a new battery.
to my oppinion, SL either draws peak power inappropriate to the sony batteries in this older MBP's or the SMC induces a bug for this type of battery.

Guys,

I'd close this thread if I were you. It's clear that Rod (who appears to be the only doubter from what I can tell) will never agree it's a software issue, even if Steve Jobs himself told him personally it was.

FWIW, I've tested this now in both directions (downgrading, upgrading, battery testing etc etc) and, without a shadow of a doubt, I can see SL handling battery/power management differently. Don't see any point in going into the details as the only person who doesn't believe it's a software issue won't be convinced anyway.

So, onwards and upwards. Thankfully, my MBP, since the last upgrade to SL as part of my testing, has gone back up to 99% health up from 53% health before I did the downgrade. Long may it continue.

Speedcheese wrote:
I'd close this thread if I were you. It's clear that Rod (who appears to be the only doubter from what I can tell) will never agree it's a software issue, even if Steve Jobs himself told him personally it was.

Yeah its time to unsubscribe to this thread. I have no doubt that is a software issue, Snow Leopard is far from perfect, as a matter of fact I've had to force a manual shut down 3 times this week because my unibody MBP wouldn't wake up properly. This whole issues stinks of a software issue, and its apparent that simply replacing the battery is an exercise in futility.

Best of luck.

Rita Mae Brown wrote:
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.

Interesting theory, Speedchase.

From what I can see the vast majority of MBP users have just got on with their lives, replaced their old dying battery, and happily got on with their lives. Rather than the dozens of new arrivals each day you would see here if it was a real OS issue you are lucky if there are a couple of new posters each week, and most of them, sadly, just have old dead batteries anyway.

I only hang around myself because I don't want to see people get mislead by the title into imagining that there is some "magic cure" when their pre-unibody battery bites the dust, as the batteries all too often do under Tiger and Leopard and SL, just because they are running one OS rather than another.

Lets face it. This is a dead issue. The problem is so clearly with the batteries rather than the OS that no-one other than your handful of committed zealots really imagine otherwise these days.

Cheers

Rod

I disagree. The problem is not the battery. If this were true then my battery would be dead. Some days my battery has 85% health and I get the charge to prove it. If the cells were dead then how are they powering my laptop for 3 hours? Some days I get only 1 hour, other days 3. Why does this amazing new battery indication service keep flip flopping? How can a battery be fine one day, bad the next day, then fine again, and back and forth with no rhyme or reason?

Apple did give me a new battery, but it was the wrong one so I sold it. I mostly DJ and produce electronic music with my MBP, so I'm just learning that it's not as portable as it used to be, it just needs to be plugged in when it's having a "service battery" day.

To any new users just now showing up; keep submitting bug reports and contacting Apple any way you can. New batteries don't fix this problem as several others have noted. Honestly, after hearing Apple will drop support for 1st generation iPhones, I think what's happened is that they've dropped support for Spring 2008 MBP's as far as the hardware is concerned. No fix will be released, that's my prediction. We're supposed to buy new laptops every 1-2 years.

I have posted this a number of times, but I will do so again. Will everyone please submit a bug report on this to Apple. The number of people upgrading to SL and then experiencing sudden battery issues is beyond belief and way beyond a co-incidence. The link to submit a bug report is:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbookpro.html

Please do this and help us all out, the more pressure the merrier.

Andy