Why does a laptop say it’s at 6-8% charge, and then it dies, but when it’s at a higher charge, going from 60% to 59% takes a while?

Question

Why does a laptop say it’s at 6-8% charge, and then it dies, but when it’s at a higher charge, going from 60% to 59% takes a while?

In: Technology

Answer 1

Basically, the closer to 0 that a battery gets, the faster it depletes. Lithium batteries (like in your laptop and cell phone) have pretty flat discharge curves – meaning that they maintain their voltage under load for a long time, but then the voltage drops way off near the end of the charge.