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I just bought a Dell Inspiron 15 5000 laptop with a AMD A10-8700P CPU. I removed Windows 10 and installed Ubuntu 16.04.

When plugged in, at random times, the battery icon will appear showing that the charge is below 100% and that the battery is charging. This happens even when the laptop has been plugged in for quite a while and it's still plugged in.

When the battery is being used, it drains very rapidly (less than one hour) even if I'm just using Google Chrome. Sometimes when using the battery, the laptop will simply shutdown even if it hasn't reached a low percentage.

After unplugging the laptop, it will often sow ridiculous times until full discharge. Example: I just unplugged it after being fully charged, and it shows 17hs left.

If I check the energy status, I see that the battery capacity is at 78.1%. Is this normal for a brand new laptop? Is my battery dying? How can I check for this? Could this be an issue with Ubuntu's kernel that could be solved by upgrading it?

The output of upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT1 when the battery is being used is:

  native-path:          BAT1
  vendor:               LGC
  model:                DELL 991XP62D62D
  serial:               9DFC
  power supply:         yes
  updated:              lun 20 jun 2016 14:32:41 ART (97 seconds ago)
  has history:          yes
  has statistics:       yes
  battery
    present:             yes
    rechargeable:        yes
    state:               discharging
    warning-level:       none
    energy:              281,644 Wh
    energy-empty:        0 Wh
    energy-full:         323,824 Wh
    energy-full-design:  414,4 Wh
    energy-rate:         25,6188 W
    voltage:             15,731 V
    time to empty:       11,0 hours
    percentage:          86%
    capacity:            78,1429%
    technology:          lithium-ion
    icon-name:          'battery-full-symbolic'
  History (charge):
    1466443961  86,000  discharging
  History (rate):
    1466443961  25,619  discharging

and when it is plugged in:

  native-path:          BAT1
  vendor:               LGC
  model:                DELL 991XP62D62D
  serial:               9DFC
  power supply:         yes
  updated:              lun 20 jun 2016 14:36:59 ART (51 seconds ago)
  has history:          yes
  has statistics:       yes
  battery
    present:             yes
    rechargeable:        yes
    state:               charging
    warning-level:       none
    energy:              263,884 Wh
    energy-empty:        0 Wh
    energy-full:         323,824 Wh
    energy-full-design:  414,4 Wh
    energy-rate:         23,1768 W
    voltage:             15,515 V
    time to full:        2,6 hours
    percentage:          81%
    capacity:            78,1429%
    technology:          lithium-ion
    icon-name:          'battery-full-charging-symbolic'
  History (charge):
    1466444201  81,000  discharging
  History (rate):
    1466444218  23,177  charging
    1466444201  26,699  discharging

The command cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT1/ueventPOWER_SUPPLY_NAME=BAT1 gives:

POWER_SUPPLY_STATUS=Discharging
POWER_SUPPLY_PRESENT=1
POWER_SUPPLY_TECHNOLOGY=Li-ion
POWER_SUPPLY_CYCLE_COUNT=0
POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_MIN_DESIGN=14800000
POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_NOW=15510000
POWER_SUPPLY_CURRENT_NOW=1782000
POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL_DESIGN=28000000
POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL=21880000
POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_NOW=18300000
POWER_SUPPLY_CAPACITY=83
POWER_SUPPLY_CAPACITY_LEVEL=Normal
POWER_SUPPLY_MODEL_NAME=DELL 991XP62D62D
POWER_SUPPLY_MANUFACTURER=LGC
POWER_SUPPLY_SERIAL_NUMBER=9DFC
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    Every new battery has to go through so called formatting: Charge fully and discharge to around 15 percent. Repeat this cycle two additional times and report back whether you have still issues.
    – kukulo
    Jun 20, 2016 at 17:42

1 Answer 1

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You can open the application "Power Statistics" to monitor the charge and discharge trends for your battery.

If you open the BIOS and go to the Battery page it should tell you if the status is far outside of "normal" for your battery according to Dell (usually if the current maximum charge is <70% of the design charge).

Google Chrome is a notorious battery hog due to the number of background threads it runs for plugins/GPU processes/etc. Try running Firefox or using an extension like "The Great Suspender" to sleep tabs you haven't looked at in XX minutes and you may see much better battery life. Extensions like NoScript and AdBlock that prevent Flash ads from playing can also help. I've found that sites like WebUpd8 and Wikia can really kill the battery quickly due to the number of ads they use to sustain the site.

There are utilities like TLP that can really help with monitoring and controlling your power usage. A helpful article on getting started can be found here.

There is also a GUI for TLP available if you check out this answer

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