Battery life dropped considerably on Mountain Lion.

This new (post ML), poor battery capacity estimation has reminded me the case, with my macbook-pro-mid-2009, of (manually) switching from the integrated graphics processor to the dedicated one, although what used to be the estimation for the decicated GPU, is now equivalent to the one when the integrated GPU is in use. Anyway, I switched to the dedicated GPU (while on ML) and the estimation time went even lower (as expected).

However, given the clue that some users experience high heat behaviours, I was wondering, if it could be possible that some malfunction of the graphics cards drivers are "sending" a false message that the faster GPU is in use (even though it isn't), and, therefore, more battery is consumed and the fans speed up.

Just a vary basic and probably senseless, due to my limited knowledge, thought..

Reading back, I think, Franc_Iphone, you don't clearly answer yangcy's question, if you did a clean install of ML or you just ran the app, while being on Lion (I guess). Or maybe was it more complicated in your case, following Apple's instructions? I am also curious. Thank you in advance!

To start with, I am currently using 15" MBP late 2011.

Well, I did more or less the same as you did. Went from Snow Leo (6-7 hrs. battery max) to ML (3 - 3.5 hrs. battery max) by an upgrade. I used 10.8.2 image directly. Then I applied the latest seed of updates but it was not really helpful. Battery indicator says max 5.5 hrs. but shortly goes down to max 3 hrs. - which is more or less real-life value that I get my MBP to work for.

Would it be a problem with me upgrading instead of going with clean installation...?

Sorry for not being clear. I did not do a clean install of ML. It was a brand new machine with Lion, that I migrated my software and data from another machine with LION. Lion was the first incarnation for me (and others) of a battery problem. ML did little to fix it...

yangcy wrote:

Franc_Iphone,

Just out of curiosity, did you perform clean installation and then applied the update?

Or did you update from Snow Leopard or Lion and then applied the update?

Thanks in advance for you reply.

Clean Install is good to avoid internal errors and incomaptible applications for Mountain Lion, Performing the Clean install will NOT fix the battery life.

You can choose either both Clean Install or directly update it's your discussion. But if you really care about your files and applications in your device, I may NOT recommend you not to do the clean install. Just do the directly update.

I actually went through the update procedure and battery life is not so good.

I thought about installing ML as a clean installation but wanted to know if that might have any positive impact on battery life. Anyway, I will try clean-installing ML on a separate partition.

FYI, my battery had 210 cycles, and had around 95% of its health reported by BatteryHealth application.

Now, after only a few days of using ML I got around 217 cycles and 93% of its health. I'm a bit worried as battery health seems to go down very fast now, at least when using ML...

Thank you Franc_Iphone! Regarding the ML installation method, in my case, I backed up from the original HD drive with TimeMachine, being on S.Leop, I then installed a new HD and did a clean install of ML from a USB flash drive and finally transfered my apps and files (not the settings) from the TimeMachine backup. If I knew at that time about this problem, I would have taken care for the battery status at various steps of the whole upgrading (hard/software) procedure. However, several users have reported to keep having the battery issue, after different ways of ML installation...

Update on my mountain lion battery issues.

Mountain lion killed my old MBP 2010 battery in a month. Admittedly it was over 2 years old and had over a 1000 charges to its name. But it went from 87% health to 80%...and then dead in about a month.

I bought a new battery for £100. It now shows 92% health on the Battery Health App after one month and 37 cycles. It lasts about four hours on word processing/email/light internet use. If this is what I get after one month, I dread to think what it will be showing on health in six months time.

Mountain Lion degrades batteries many times faster than Snow Leopard. In my experience, and many other users, that is a fact.

Can't confirm.

yangcy wrote:

I actually went through the update procedure and battery life is not so good.

I thought about installing ML as a clean installation but wanted to know if that might have any positive impact on battery life. Anyway, I will try clean-installing ML on a separate partition.

FYI, my battery had 210 cycles, and had around 95% of its health reported by BatteryHealth application.

Now, after only a few days of using ML I got around 217 cycles and 93% of its health. I'm a bit worried as battery health seems to go down very fast now, at least when using ML...

Well, Creating Mountain Lion on seperate partition will not make any difference. It will still be the same and i've tried this method twice and still didn't work.

My cycles stands at 466 and 91% health this cycles has been increased fast after the installation of Mountain Lion.

The Health will automatically keeps balance, Sometimes it will go up sometimes down, frequently it does go up and down itself. This happened to me after the upgrade, It's almost impossible to proof this issue about the cycle count 😟, Only Apple can do this and this cannot be fixed by the Professional User.

PS: Beware if the health is at 80% you're warned to change your battery in a critical action and this is very bad for the laptop.

If the clean installtion does not help at all then what will?

I can change my battery to a new one, not a problem, but it seems that changing it won't fix the battery issues.

yangcy wrote:

If the clean installtion does not help at all then what will?

I can change my battery to a new one, not a problem, but it seems that changing it won't fix the battery issues.

Changing the battery is possible discussion. You can do that with Apple, They'll help you professionally and make sure don't give up until your satisfaction about the battery life, If you're still under warranty or you do have Apple Care package you don't have to worry about this, They will help you professionally anyway Good Luck.

Please keep posted when you get your battery changed.

PS: I don't know if they might do for free, But for me they've charged and said that it's not part of warranty, You can try the best to get it done for free via Genius Bar.

A fresh install is not the same as a fix / firmware update. I can't promise what's fixed mine constantly now for the past 8 weeks will fix yours but watch this space for a future update to 10.8.2. I was getting 3 1/2 hours maximum for all of 2012....

Last night I ran non stop for 3 1/2 hours working. It was still showing 3 1/2 hours remaining. I then let it sit for 10 mins, medium brightness). All these these apps had been running;

Mac Mail, Safari, ICal, Skype, Twitter, Office 2011 Word, Powerpoint and Excel (all with docs open). Also had, Drop box, Google Music, Adium, JawBone, Bluetooth, Wifi, Google Drive. Here's a screen shot fragment of what I was showing 🙂 There's hope!

Franc_Iphone wrote:

A fresh install is not the same as a fix / firmware update. I can't promise what's fixed mine constantly now for the past 8 weeks will fix yours but watch this space for a future update to 10.8.2. I was getting 3 1/2 hours maximum for all of 2012....

Last night I ran non stop for 3 1/2 hours working. It was still showing 3 1/2 hours remaining. I then let it sit for 10 mins, medium brightness). All these these apps had been running;

Mac Mail, Safari, ICal, Skype, Twitter, Office 2011 Word, Powerpoint and Excel (all with docs open). Also had, Drop box, Google Music, Adium, JawBone, Bluetooth, Wifi, Google Drive. Here's a screen shot fragment of what I was showing 🙂 There's hope!

Whooa! The remaining time shows 6hours which is definitely excellent at 66%! This is 10.8.3 beta build right? Plus did you try to use apps like MiniBatteryLogger? In the MinibatteryLogger you can track the battery and set timer of during battery usage too. If you can able to track your usage time please do so. It's interesting to know the latest beta build!

For me i never get 6 hours of battery remaining under Mountain Lion 10.8.2, Frequently i get 3 hours and 6 minutes.

Thank you for posting this 🙂 Much apprecaite it

This looks awesome Franc_Iphone! I hope the update is on its way.