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

would you folks who aren't having problems and don't have any useful solutions please just quit posting here?

This is an OBVIOUS OS issue. My battery worked fine and dandy before the SL update. As in, plenty of battery life, just a few weeks before "upgrading" I ran for over 3 hours while on WiFi, I was updating a blog, downloading & listening to music. Other users have reported that when booting from Leopard their battery life is back to normal. How could a defective battery behave differently under different OS installs? Who's paying you guys to keep denying this? Are they paying you well?

For a couple weeks I was getting under 2 hours of battery life and the 'service battery' warning was always there. Then, somehow, my battery sprung back to life. I just downloaded Coconut Battery, it says I've got 89% battery health, original capacity was 5600, current capacity is 5033. For a while there it was 2500 or lower. So explain to me how a battery goes from 89% health down to 20-30% health, then back up to 89% health?

My Mac is 21 months old with only 63 load cycles on it. There is no reason why my battery should be worn out. I sometimes only use my Mac for a few hours in a week. I would say, given my small amount of total hours of usage 90% health is reasonable and expected. However, for a few weeks I was getting less than 2 hours, so my battery health was well below 50% (I only now got Coconut battery).

I'm really getting sick of seeing people come on here with no problems just getting Apple's back telling us to go buy new batteries. Maybe a new battery tricks the OS for a little while, but I'm living proof that these "bad" batteries can suddenly become "good" batteries.

Here's what my battery info says:

Battery Information:

Model Information:
Manufacturer: Sony
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): 1108
Fully charged: No
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 5033
Health Information:
Cycle count: 63
Condition: Normal
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -1443
Voltage (mV): 9915

Notice how it says "NORMAL"? Hrm, I wonder why it says NORMAL!!!!! For a while it said "service battery". NOTHING CHANGED, ALL I DID WAS KEEP CHECKING AND POWER CYCLING, RESETTING PRAM AND SMC (Or whatever it's called).

Seriously, get out of here if you aren't having issues with your battery or letting us know if there's a fix or if Apple is on the case.

I've got 45 minutes left on my current charge, and I've used it for at least 3 hours without ever plugging in. 3.5+ hours has been my normal battery life. Then it was cut short to maybe 1.5 or less, it became erratic. It would run for a while with 0:00 remaining then shutdown randomly. Now it's ok again. Condition goes from "normal" to "service" and back to "normal". Again, if the battery is bad then how is it performing like it's NOT BAD? I too am scared of future updates at this point. I don't want my battery to drop back to 1.5 hours or less. I like having 3.5+ hours.

The fact that no mods have come to regulate all you people saying we're just in denial and we have bad batteries is proof of black hat denial tactics if you ask me. Otherwise, you're pretty disturbed individuals for trying to convince us to all go out and buy batteries. I say just hold tight, your "bad" batteries will magically become "good", you just have to wait, I think the bug in SL only lasts for a finite time, it's not permanent.

No problems at all? Seriously?

I had the same problem, which is why I came to this forum. SAME PROBLEM.

I spent $130 of my own money to get a new battery. I was ****** off. I was 1 month out of warranty. 1 MONTH and they didn't replace it for free as they've done for other people here.

So no. Not a fanboy. Not paid by apple. I'm just trying to help and it's annoying to see people keep speculating when the answer is right in front of their face.

YOU NEED A NEW BATTERY.

PERIOD.

We're back to your reading comprehension issue. Let me explain it to you:

Since the battery issue was not delineated in the 10.6.2 release notes, the bug was not addressed. That's where the phrase "if in fact it does address the battery issue" ties in as a caveat.

If you need help with the words and/or terms used in this, or any other posts, just ask. There's no shame in asking professor...

Same problem here. "Service Battery" since the Snow Leopard installation and what's even worse: significantly less lasting battery. Got a MBP 15" end 2006 and a new battery last autumn. So it had at least 2-3 hours this summer and now I'm not getting 1 hour! So sad! And the 10.6.2 update doesn't help

splatnikG, there is not much activity here not because people realized is a battery problem, but cos WE ARE SICK of your posts and therefore no bother to post/read anymore, PERIOD.

Good luck to all you guys having the issues, I have unsubscribed this post now as it's totally useless thanks to people like splatnikG and rkovelman, so I won't bother to read anymore messages.

I am another new mac user with this same problem.
Purchased new Macbook in Jan2009.
Following the upgrade to SL I have the intermittent service battery warning, with a huge reduction in useable battery life. (Now less than 2hrs) The upgrade to 10.6.2 did not help at all.
If I reset the SMC then the battery will display normal status (80% health). However if I unplug and use the computer for about an hour then the service battery comes back and the health goes back to 54%.

I have an appointment with Apple Service later today. I will update after.

Andrew:

I'm really interested to see what Apple says on your fairly new MacBook Battery after reporting the issue to them.

Given that you may still be under warranty, the customer service thing to do would be to give you a "new battery" and send you on your way--which we know new batteries still exhibit this same behavior by those who have already gotten replacement batteries.

I haven't applied the 10.6.2 update just yet--it does fix some other issues that I am having since the SL update. I'll check my battery conditions w/Coconut, apply the update, restart and see if things are the same (they should be since the update isn't for the battery issue).

My personal experience as an I.T. engineer for over a decade, mostly working with laptops, suggests this is clearly a "software" issue of some kind.

The "service battery" warning not withstanding, even those of us who don't have the service battery warning issue are still having unsatisfactory results with the battery just after the SL update compared to before.

I did a "fresh install" of SL, (not an upgrade) and still have significantly reduced battery performance and bizarre battery status reporting from time to time--even with aggressively set power management settings I always use for maximum battery performance on a single charge.

The only logical explanation I could see for such reduced battery life is if the "CPU History" monitor showed processor usage was at 50% or better "all the time" or some other significant events causing more power to be consumed than normal on my early 2006 Black MacBook Core Duo.

So, the most likely explanation I could find why battery charge would be soo sharply reduced goes right out the window from my perspective.

I generated another post on SL's inability to recognize the "hibernate free ratio" setting in the power management settings via "terminal".

This setting essentially allows you to tell the OS to go to sleep when your battery reaches "X" percent remaining.

That allowed me to safely hibernate as the condition of my battery aged over time. It used to hibernate when battery charge got to 10%.

Since SL, I changed that setting to "50%" and according to the system PSlog (in terminal) I watched the battery discharge, and SL pays absolutely no attention to the hibernate free ratio value I set, nor does it pop up a low battery warning window when the PSLog shows the early warning at 20% remaining.

SL will continue running until the battery goes completely flat--without soo much as my old warning saying I had 10% left. Running these batteries "flat" out of power is bad for them.

This strongly suggests some coding has to be refined in the way SL communicates with the processor in the batteries that we all have.

Looking forward to your results from Apple!

Sorry for the repost--somehow I was unable to delete the original or continue editing before it went permanent. The remainder of the post is included here Andrew.

On 11/7/09 I've since done my 3rd SMC rest etc. as outlined by Apple with my MacBook plugged into A/C power for the last 72 hours after this most recent reset.

As of this posting Coconut Battery 2.6.5 reports:

Current Battery Charge - 3986 mAh
Max Charge - 4084 mAh
97%

Current Battery Capacity - 4084 mAh
Original Battery Capacity - 5020 mAh
81%

Battery-Loadcycles - 183
Age of My Mac - 37 months
Charger Connected - Yes
Battery is Charging - No (its fully charged at the moment)

If I'm interpreting the data correctly, my battery is only being charged to 97% of its current charging capacity; and

the battery is only holding 81% of what it used to when it was new. In other words, I've only lost 19% of my original battery capacity since it was installed.

Here are my battery stats from "System Profiler"

Battery Information:

Model Information:
Manufacturer: DP
Device name: ASMB016
Pack Lot Code: 0002
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 102a
Hardware Revision: 0500
Cell Revision: 0102

Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 3986
Fully charged: Yes
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 4084

Health Information:
Cycle count: 183
Condition: Normal

Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 0
Voltage (mV): 12473

It might be helpful if people having weird battery problems would copy and paste their battery information from the System Profiler.

To do this, from the Toolbar, click the Apple and choose "about this Mac". Click the "more info" button from the window that pops up and choose "power" from the list under the Hardware tab when its expanded.

Copy and paste the battery information into the post--that's it!

"SL will continue running until the battery goes completely flat--without soo much as my old warning saying I had 10% left. Running these batteries "flat" out of power is bad for them."

I disagree because I still get a warning that I am running on low battery @ 10% before it will go to "sleep".

Madrich:

Again, we're all having completely random and bizarre differences as a result of the SL upgrade.

Would you mind posting your battery stats from Coconut Battery and from the System Profiler as I've outlined above? It'd be interesting to see if there are any commonalities (or in our case differences) in batteries.

Also, did you do a "fresh" install or did you upgrade?

I upgraded to 10.6.2 on Monday night. I haven't had any other issues with my newest battery until today. I was at about 20% charge left last night when I shut my macbook pro down. Today, when I tried to start up, I had to plug my cord in. I looked at my battery status and I now have the Service Battery message!

I hope this is software related! Any others news on this??

*UPDATE*
Apple Customer Care called me right on schedule!
I discussed the issue with them, they asked if I reset the SMC and if I calibrated the battery, then asked me to send my system profile. The representative said that my battery was definitely bad since it is currently showing full charge capacity of 2127 mAh. 66 days of warranty remaining so they will send a new battery in 7-10 days! *Apple Customer Care +1*
I asked if they had others with the same problem. She said yes we have had a few.
I mentioned that is seemed to correspond with my recent OS upgrade and she agreed! The new OS currently uses significantly more power to run, putting more strain on the battery causing weak batteries to fail, and normal batteries to not run as long. She mentioned she noticed an hour less run time on her personal macbook! *Apple Software -1*
I will see how the new battery holds out, I guess I will probably buy the 3 year Apple Care Warranty. I sure hope they figure this out. I would highly recommend NOT upgrading to SL if you are using an older battery, it will probably die. My $0.02.

AndrewG2009

Before your new battery arrives, would you mind posting your Battery information from the system profiler and run coconut battery 2.6.5 and report that data?

It'd be interesting to see what hardware model etc., of battery you have so others can take a look in the event they might be able to make a warranty replacement as well.

Replacing the battery even out of warranty is the correct thing to do, as downgrading from SL will give customer's back most of their prior usage from an an otherwise "fine" battery (pre-SL) install.

Thanks!

Battery Information:

Model Information:
Serial Number: 9G848049Y3NYB
Manufacturer: DP
Device name: bq20z951
Pack Lot Code: 0000
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 002a
Hardware Revision: 0005
Cell Revision: 0100
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 712
Fully charged: No
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 2127
Health Information:
Cycle count: 127
Condition: Check Battery
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -1016
Voltage (mV): 11573

From CoconutBattery: (Same results with iSTAT Nano)

Current Charge: 762 mAh
Max Charge: 2068 mAh
36%
Current Capacity: 2068 mAh
Original Capacity: 4100 mAh
50%
Loadcycles: 127