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Having a strange issue with my battery meter in Ubuntu 16.04. I had the same issue in Debian, so it's possibly an issue with the battery itself, but let's see what you think.

These are screenshots from the default power utility.

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The first image is the readout when the battery is charging. As you can see, apparently it's discharging at over 60 Watts. I'm no electrical engineer, but that's absurdly high for a laptop that's not doing a damn thing. It also shows 2.6 minutes to full charge from 40%. That ain't right.

The second image is the readout immediately after disconnecting the charger. 1.7 minutes to empty with 40% remaining? Yeah nah.

The third image is what it looks like when the percentage drops down a tick. As you can see, this is a fairly normal readout. Is there perhaps a known issue with the power usage software that doesn't correctly report the time to charge/rate of discharge?

Another anomaly is the fact that it reports 4.4mAh capacity, when my battery is 5.2mAh. However, I'm happy to chalk that error up to a cheap Chinese battery from eBay that has incorrect info on it.

Does anyone have any idea what could be going on, and if so, if there's a fix?

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  • Not a solution, but you could check if upower tells you more about your battery. I guess upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0 might be the full command. More can be found here: askubuntu.com/questions/69556/…
    – dufte
    Jun 8, 2016 at 7:46
  • @dufte, upower confirms essentially the same details. Jun 8, 2016 at 12:31
  • Thanks to @SeverusTux for embedding the images. Poor little newbie me needs some rep for that priviledge. Jun 8, 2016 at 12:37
  • Update: Battery now showing a capacity of 6.6mAh. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Jun 10, 2016 at 12:56
  • Just tried out my old genuine Toshiba battery that came with the laptop, and I get the same issue. I'm going to call it being an issue with how Linux calculates battery power. Jun 12, 2016 at 8:17

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