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4

How reliable is the battery data in ubuntu the power statistics?

rated 0 times [ 4] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 3001 / 1 Year ago, sun, january 15, 2023, 12:42:50

Right now the power statistics show that:

Energy when full: 25.5 Wh  

Energy (design):  93.2 Wh

And indeed the battery doesn't seem to be lasting as long as it used too.

My question:

Is this data reliable? Does it really indicate that I should replace the battery, or could it be the charger, laptop, or OS that is stopping the battery from fully charging?

Is any way of validating the battery is indeed to blame? I'd like to be sure before shelling out 90$ for a new battery.

(If it helps, the battery is a 3 year old dell 9 cell rated at 90 Wh).

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eanda

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1 Year ago

answered 1 Year ago rtbrbab · Accepted Answer

For x86 laptops, the battery information you see in /sys/class/power_supply/*/uevent is as accurate as the data provided from the battery. Typically this smart battery data comes over something like an i2c bus via an embedded controller and firmware allows one to gather the dynamically changing information via the ACPI battery status _BST control and the hard-set static battery information via _BIX or _BIF controls. Since these are the standard ACPI interfaces and are accessible to userspace via the /sys/class/power_supply/*/uevent data I suspect the data you see here is exactly what Windows will be seeing too.

The only thing which will be different is the way the data is presented to you in higher level applications and widgets. Who knows what kinds of data averaging tricks will be done on the data in these applications. In my opinion, if you want to see what the battery is actually reporting, look at the /sys interface.