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
Don’t forget that it’s an estimate, this information is provided to you by the chip in the battery itself (in most, if not all, modern laptops), then further processed by the operating system. The battery (chip) can be calibrated to provide more accurate information, this is often done in the factory, but over time, as you use the battery, that initial calibration information becomes less useful because the battery degrades.
Your operating system also further processes that battery information and tries to estimate how long the battery will last on the current load, however, it can’t predict what you’re going to do next, whether you’re going to close all the applications or open something that requires lots of power.
Lastly, it’s unhealthy for batteries to completely run out of charge, so what you see isn’t the true battery charge level, so the operating system and your motherboard will usually try to protect the battery and kill your laptop before the battery itself fully runs out of charge.
I’m not an engineer, but there’s the whole issue with voltages, which further contributes to the problem.
N.B. a lot of this is based on my own experience, my computer science degree and some quick research, please forgive any inaccuracies.
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