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

I've just installed snow leopard about an hour ago. This is what I got:

Under 10.5.8 (before the upgrade):

Full charge capacity: 4030
Charging : YES
Cycle count: 289
Condition: CHECK BATTERY

Now after upgrade to snow leopard:
Full charge capacity: 4391
Charging : NO
Cycle count: 289
Condition : NORMAL

Don't know what to say! The funny thing is that this afternoon I went to the Apple store to buy the snow leopard installation CD. While I was there, I asked a genius to check my battery after I explained to him what a lot of people have been experiencing after upgrading to snow leopard. Result: battery need to be replaced! (that's under 10.5.8 , not snow leopard)

Leopard or snow leopard my battery doesn't last more than 2 hours despite having more than 4K of full capacity charge.

Really don't know what to say.

And now:

Full charge capacity: 4397
Charging : YES
cycle: 289
condition: normal

??????????

I only wish that was right ... if I want the problem to go away ... boot from a Leopard disk vs Show Leopard.

Its not the battery. Just a waste of my time, I tried to help them with this bug, been a tech 20 + years ... they give me some first line tech guy that can't even understand what I am saying. The store same thing on this issue ...

I have a older Macbook Pro at this point and its just a pain in the butt to get them to care about this issue. As a security researcher I understand why my peers don't bother reporting things to vendors. The responsiveness to a real issue blows.

I love me some Apple, have 10 + iphones 5 iphones, 5 laptops in the house .. a lab of them at the office but the response to this issue is just blah. I get them on the phone and they dont give a flip about the 1000's of posts on this forum (the chalk it up to haters).

They will get around to it some day long after I have a new laptop.

Hi bistec2,

Variable reporting of capacity etc is actually a very common characteristic of these batteries when they start to fail. Have a look at the way Dave Everhart's battery (under OSX 10.4.11) is performing, for example.


In another private forum I was having a discussion with a very knowledgable Mac user, running Tiger on his MBP, the other day who described his own recent battery experiences as follows:

+When mine shut down today, the computer was idling with no open apps and the battery just over 60 percent charge, and I had walked outside to a deck to enjoy a lovely view of the Snake River in Spring. The only ap I had run before leaving it was Safari and they seldom runs up the temps.+

+Came back maybe five minute laters to "no wakey" and attached the power adaptor. My shift ended before the battery had charged up more that about 55 percent, so I completed the charge at home. Still at 49 percent.+

+After that I did an SMC reset and the health went back to 82--go figure. The charge life this morning certainly indicated that it was under 50. A few weeks ago the health dropped about ten points but eventually returned to its old range without an SMC reset or any other action on my part.+

+This is concerning because, when the original battery went walkabout. it showed similar behavior--toggling between about 85 and 65 percent health...+

(Did that sound familiar to anyone here? But this is under OSX 10.4.11 )

Or "FlippinDaisy" running <http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=11295690#11295690>OSX 10.5.8 ?

Or "ARealMac(PPC)User's experiences back in March 2009, culminating in a replacement battery fixing his problems (until, in a different thread, another year later, he reveals that the replacement has died too, with almost identical symptoms, but this time under SL instead of leopard)

Or the long lists of posts after the "Leopard" update from Tiger, complaining about identical behaviour then, etc etc.

Or huge numbers of the thousands of posts in this forum dating back from the days before SL was released. (take a look at the posts from before January 2009, for example, see http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1151&start=950 and later pages in this very forum)

Your battery, when dying, will jump up and down in terms of "Full charge capacity", and even in terms of the voltage reading it gives at any time, depending to a substantial extent simply on the load it is under, simply because of the changing impact of increased internal resistance under different loads, and, to some extent, even at different battery temperatures.

It was ever thus with Lithium batteries. It happened under Tiger. It happened under Leopard, and it happens now under Snow Leopard. The only difference now is that the "Service Battery" warning (which wasn't present under either Leopard or Tiger) may now provide you with some advance warning of the way things are headed.

Cheers

Rod

For the record, my battery has only 8 cycles on it, and I am getting this "Service Battery" as well.

Admittedly, I don't take care of my battery like I should. I am one of those users that rarely every uses the laptop on battery. The battery is about a year old, from what I can remember, and was a warranty replacement for a battery that started to swell. I have the MacBook Pro 1,1 (yeah, early adopter).

Here is my battery info, for those that might find interest in it:

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): 1054
Fully charged: No
Charging: Yes
Full charge capacity (mAh): 1857
Health Information:
Cycle count: 8
Condition: Check Battery
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 911
Voltage (mV): 12562

Completing only eight cycles in twelve months is enough to kill just about any Lithium battery, Michael, and that is what has happened to yours, I'm afraid. They need regular, but gentle, use to get the best life out of them.

Your system profiler information makes it pretty clear that the "Service Battery" message in your case is perfectly correct. You need a new battery, I'm afraid.

Cheers

Rod

Hey Rod,
I may have to concede to your thinking. I installed a new battery about 2 months ago. It has been working fine. I'm putting the old battery in storage for now. Thanks for your insights. I may be the only person here who will admit that your points are probably spot on. And I assume I'm going to see a sh*t storm of comments that I'm nuts to agree with you.

But I have a working laptop again and for me that's all that matters right now. Thanks...

parisontour,

On the contrary, some of us have always preferred Rod's reasoned arguments to others' somewhat hysterical bleating. A new battery fixed my problems, too, which had nothing to do with Snow Leopard since I am still on Leopard.

I'm glad you're up and working again.

I saw this a few weeks ago when I took my battery in. He then did a SMC reset, and it disappeared. Got home and the service battery was back.

As of now, I'm getting less than an hour on a fully charged battery.

Glad to hear new batteries are working for some. I'm guessing you have newer computers? I think something to do with a firmware upgrade has left early 2008 owners in the cold.
My battery has done the random shutdown now. Says it has 45 minutes left, then just goes black. Other times though, it performs as it should. I've yet to hear an explanation from anyone how a bad battery with dead cells is able to hold 85% charge and last 3 hours. The fact that my battery performs like it's supposed to "sometimes" is enough to convince me there is no problem with the battery, but rather a disagreement with the SMC, firmare/software or other hardware components.

For most of us I don't this issue is going anywhere. If your computer is late 2008 or newer then you might just have a bad battery. For those of us with older computers we're expected to get new ones. Perhaps in the next year I'll be able to do that. I don't like the idea that a laptop is only supposed to last 1-2 years. My old PC from 2005 is still going strong.

parisontour wrote:
Hey Rod,
I may have to concede to your thinking. I installed a new battery about 2 months ago. It has been working fine. I'm putting the old battery in storage for now. Thanks for your insights. I may be the only person here who will admit that your points are probably spot on. And I assume I'm going to see a sh*t storm of comments that I'm nuts to agree with you.

But I have a working laptop again and for me that's all that matters right now. Thanks...

In all fairness to Rod, he does have valid points regarding battery reliability/failure issues and rates, and the KB articles he points people to are a good starting point. Even if he does get under our skin sometimes with his looonnnngggggg posts, it's easy enough to scroll past to the next post.

The simple fact is, there is still no real answer yet. I'm sure Apple have their sleeves rolled up doing root cause analysis, but until they come back with something, we're all still guessing. Even the engineers I contacted are split between this being a battery or OS problem.

Don

Shigglyboo, your computer is actually one of the latest models that this thread refers to, rather than an early one. Almost everyone in this thread has an "early 2008" model or earlier. The battery was completely changed in the model following yours and there are no , or next to no, reports in this thread from people using them.

All of those who have reported that a new battery "fixed" their problems here that I have seen, in fact, have computers as old, or older, than your own.

There are essentially two different firmware versions for the batteries fitted to these computers up to your model. The early ones originally came with Firmware version 102a (very few of these are still in circulation, either because they have died, were exchanged, or were updated) and the later ones with 0110 (one or both of the battery firmware updates updated 102a batteries to 0110). Later batteries were / are sold with 0110 firmware pre-installed.

When the firmware updates for these batteries came out back in April and October 2007 some people found that they actually improved battery performance for a period of time.

Others had their problems resolved (again, at least for a period of time) through access to the second of two recall programs offered for these very problematic batteries when they exhibited problems very similar to those we are seeing reported here (and which you report yourself) - erratic reporting of shutdowns with high reported charge levels, etc etc etc.

There is nothing mysterious about computers shutting down erratically with variable reporting of the % charge or time remaining. It occurs simply because although the battery can still "hold a charge" the build up of internal resistance stops it from being able to deliver it. If you use the computer for purposes that don't place much demand on the processors or drive then it may run right to flat. If, however, for any reason, there is a "peak" in power demand that it can't meet, because of increased internal resistance in the battery, then the computer may shut down at any time (though the flatter the battery is the more probable this becomes at least during the early stages of deterioration.)

It is this form of deterioration which the "Service battery" warning was introduced in 10.6 to deal with - providing prior warning that the battery's ability to actually deliver had declined. Your battery , with sudden shutdowns, is simply beginning to behave in exactly the fashion that the "service battery" message has previously been warning you was likely to occur.

Cheers

Rod

Hey Everyone!

System Info:
Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz

Battery Information:

Model Information:
Device name: ASMB012
Pack Lot Code: 0000
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 0110
Hardware Revision: 0500
Cell Revision: 0303
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 1962
Fully charged: Yes
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 1962
Health Information:
Cycle count: 258
Condition: Check Battery
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -3
Voltage (mV): 12391

So after upgrading to Snow Leopard my battery now turns off at 63 or so percent. I took it to apple and they said I need a new battery. When I told them that I noticed people having a similar issue on the forums they said they have never heard of anything like this.

So I bought a new battery today from buy.com hoping it would solve this issue. By the looks of things this might now do anything at all. Am I wrong in getting a new battery? I got the computer in the summer of 2008 and battery worked perfect until I did the upgrade. Any feedback would be great, thanks so much everyone.

I hope the battery that you have posted figures for is the old one, not the one you have just bought, Gosztyla, as it has obviously been in use for a long time, with 258 cycles on board and down to only 1962mAh capacity!

A battery in this sort of condition can be expected to shut down unpredictably in any high demand situation.

Cheers

Rod

Why is it Rod that my battery now reads 4000 mAh at 97% and 161 cycles, when 3 months ago it was reading 2350mAh at 25% and 150 cycles AND I was receiving regular service battery messages and rapid drains?

I may have just cursed myself! but I have had no problems for 3 months. Unless I have a magic battery that can heal itself surely a software issue must be high up as a cause?