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

I received my new after-market battery yesterday, and since it was out in the freezing cold I haven't done anything with it yet so it could get to room temperature. So, I was going to install the new battery this morning, but before doing so I noticed that the "Service Battery" light was not visible anymore - that's with the replacement battery that Apple had sent me about a year ago. Why did the warning just disappear? I hadn't even installed the battery I just purchased yet. I'll keep the Apple branded battery in there and see how long it goes before showing that error message.

Here's my battery specs as of 1/9/10:

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): 4366
Fully charged: Yes
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 4501
Health Information:
Cycle count: 126
Condition: Normal
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -206
Voltage (mV): 12249

And I had forgotten to include full specs on my hardware, so here goes:

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro3,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP31.0070.B07
SMC Version (system): 1.16f11
Serial Number (system): xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hardware UUID: xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled

Is there a way to dump ALL INFORMATION from System Profiler at once?

Well, I went to my Genius appointment @ one of the local Apple stores (in the appointment notes I described the Snow Leopard battery issue). She did the battery check and of course it check out defective with 130 cycles.

She had not heard of the issues that have been raised in this thread, but without asking, she told me she was replacing my battery. I told her that while I was doubtful as to whether it would resolve the issue, I would never decline a new battery.

I will say I was very impressed with the way the folks at this Apple Genius Bar handled the issue.

So, I have a new battery and we'll see how it behaves. If it solves the problem I will say I was wrong, at least in my case. Given some of the new battery reports in this thread, I am skeptical, but a free replacement battery is NEVER a BAD thing...

You can dump all of the info from System profiler either by using the "save" option from the "File" window in System Profiler, or by using "print" and then "printing to PDF", dustrho.

Be warned, though. If you have "Full profile" selected in the "View" menu of System Profiler at the time this will generate a huge amount of information - 472 pages on my own MBP 15 when using the "print to pdf" approach. Selecting "basic profile" before "printing" to pdf in this fashion will be adequate for most people's purposes.

You make a good point with respect to temperature. It is easy to forget down here in Oz that you are all in the middle of a pretty vicious winter up there at present ( whereas it was 103ºF at my place yesterday). Very cold, temperatures, of course, can also have a dramatic, but temporary, effect on battery performance, and provide a part of the reason why the minimum recommended environmental operating temperature for MBPs is 50° F. Different types of Lithium batteries have very different operational ranges but most consumer lithium Ion batteries for use in computers won't produce much in the way of power once they get below 32ºF, (see http://www.lxe.com/uploadedFiles/pdf/WhitePapers/wpLi-IonBatteries.pdf) and a battery which is already down on power may well experience problems before this. Such factors may well explain some people's experience of charge variability at present, too.

Cheers

Rod

The following may shed some light on the issue:

I have two 15" MBP's: An original MBP 1,1 2.0 and a MBP 3,1 2.2. I upgraded the 3,1 to Snow Leopard a few months ago—no problems. But I upgraded the 1,1 about two weeks ago and have been experienced the same issues that have been described in this thread (lower battery life, lower capacity as reported by coconutBattery, etc.). This computer was upgraded directly from Tiger (Apple: I have family license packs for Leopard and Snow Leopard...just never installed Leopard on the 1,1). Both computers are running 10.6.2.

Tonight, coconutBattery reported the 1,1's battery to have 52% of its capacity left. After reading this thread, I reset the SMC on the 1,1, but this did not help (still 52%).

However, I just swapped the battery in my 3,1 with the 52% battery from the 1,1. Originally, coconutBattery reported 52% capacity and the gauge in the menu bar reported just over 2 hours of life. However, after about 20 minutes of use, I could watch the menu bar gauge increase in small increments. Every few seconds, the amount displayed would increase 3 to 6 minutes. It roughly topped out at 3:10, and I just ran coconutBattery, where the battery capacity jumped to 86%!!!

I also swapped in a "spare" battery (my original battery that came with the 3,1), which had battery capacity listed at 72%. After about 1/2 hour running in the MBP 1,1, coconutBattery reported it with 62% health. Note that this is not quite as straightforward, as this battery had been sitting unused for about 6 months, but the rapid decrease is interesting.

Obviously, these are not definitive tests, but they certainly point to a problem with the 1,1 generation and Snow Leopard.

I am going to let the battery run down to see if it is a true 86%, but this does seem to point directly to a problem with the 1,1 generation and SL.

Let me know if there are any other tests that I could run.

Add mine to the list! I hate Snow Leopard! First it was problems with my wifi, which still is not fixed and now a battery problem.

Battery Information:

Model Information:
Manufacturer: Sony
Device name: ASMB012
Pack Lot Code: 0003
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 102a
Hardware Revision: 0400
Cell Revision: 0303
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 1966
Fully charged: No
Charging: Yes
Full charge capacity (mAh): 2633
Health Information:
Cycle count: 177
Condition: Check Battery
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 521
Voltage (mV): 12597

So nice to see the list growing, shame that Apple is still silent on this, remember to fill up the feedback section islandgirlfl.

Alex Martin Ensemble wrote:
So nice to see the list growing, shame that Apple is still silent on this, remember to fill up the feedback section islandgirlfl.

Hi Alex,

Yes, the feedback page the formal way to notify Apple of this issue. The more feedback they get, the more it'll help Apple nail this problem:

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

Please remember to provide battery info and System Profiler info:

Apple Menu > About This Mac > More Info... > File > Save As... > attach the file to your feedback

Don

At least CNET / Macfixit are recognising the problem:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10426564-263.html

Short info on my experience:

- MacBook Pro 2.16 15" purchased November 2006
- September 2008 battery replaced by Apple since capacity was below 60% of the original after 150 cycles
- Upgrade to OS X 10.6 and 10.6.2 as soon as available
- Battery normal until end 2009. Than sudden decrease to 50% of the original capacity with 120 cycles
- All hardware resets made with no result
- new battery purchased on January 12th 2010
- new battery installed after SMC reset
- battery normal 5450 mA

Well I took the MacBook Pro to the Genius bar and here's the result...

The MacBook Pro is 3 years old and out of any kind of warranty. The original faulty battery was replaced free in March 2009 which was great but it only lasted 9 months before becoming faulty. Those 'brown box' replacement parts only carry a 90 day warranty so the replacement battery is also long out of warranty and the 300 cycles rule doesn't apply, I'm sure these parts are refurbished items not new.

That left me having to buy a battery. I could either buy another brown box item for £70 ($114) which would only carry 90 days warranty or a brand new one for £94 ($150) which has a full warranty. I bought the brand new one since the last brown box battery failed after about 9 months and if this new one does it'll be replaced for free.

We'll see how it goes.

At last CNET gets some common sense.

This weekend I decided to conduct an experiment and downgraded from 10.6.2 to 10.5.3 in an attempt to figure out this whole battery issue.

I also attempted to calibrate my battery using this link from apple:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490

I'll be honest, I was desperate to prove the "buy a new battery" crowd wrong, and while I can't definitively say that, this is what my experiment concluded:

Battery performance on Leopard was significantly better, but not much better. There's no doubt now that my battery is fubared. coconutBattery showed that I had 70+% maximum charge at 78 cycles before I attempted to calibrate the battery and 40-50% afterwards. As a matter of fact, every time I attempted to deplete the battery, when I powered up, I saw my maximum charge drop.

I still experienced random shut downs, but not at the 78% mark that I experienced faithfully under snow leopard. I was able to drain the battery to 20% while actively using the laptop, something I was unable to do in Snow Leopard as at 78%, the machine would shut off.

I have not had a chance to have the SMC replaces, as suggested, as that would require time to take the laptop in, which I don't have at the moment.

So my conclusions are:

1. My battery is fried, wether or not this is a result of Snow Leopard, or a result of my reinstalling my software multiple times, or a result of all my attempts to fix the battery, it now has serious problems or simply a bad battery, I cannot say. I thought I was doing a good job of maintaining my battery as specified by Apple, enough so that at 78 Cycles, I should have better performance, considering that apple claims only a 20% drop should occur at 300 cycles.

2. There is a bug in Snow Leopard, pretty much summed up in that CNET article, that is not in Leopard.

3. I won't be replacing the battery. I have the luxury of not needing a new battery as this is my backup machine, and I don't trust that the replacement battery won't fail as well.

Glad to see that CNET wrote an article, hopefully this will help to get a resolution or even an acknowledgement from Apple.

Alex Martin Ensemble wrote:
At last CNET gets some common sense.

There are enough people contacting Apple about this issue that we can expect action. The published article is probably going to push along work being done to resolve the issue. Again, the link to send your feedback:

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

Remember to include your Apple System Profiler report:

Apple Menu > About This Mac > More Info... > File > Save As... > attach to your feedback

Thanks,
Don

don montalvo wrote:
There are enough people contacting Apple about this issue that we can expect action. The published article is probably going to push along work being done to resolve the issue.

Let's hope it pushes this enough to include a fix in 10.6.3 or at the very least a lone update. Apple should be listening to us MBP owners about this issue, and not sit on it until a big-named media company (CNET) publishes an article like they recently did.

well now that CNET is acknowledging the issue I fully expect our two favorite naysayers to stop with their nonsense.

HELLO MODS? Yes, can you please start removing posts from people that only wish to confuse people and divert their attention away from the issue?

Looking forward to a new update fix or a free battery from Apple.

Keep filling up that feedback people! Looks like the end is in sight!