After a recent upgrade to Linux Mint 22.3, my laptop battery has stopped charging beyond 60%.
When I checked the battery health, it showed "Excellent".
However, when the charger is removed, the laptop shuts down immediately.
What could be causing this issue?
That the laptop shuts down immediately even though 60% is displayed means the chance of a battery defect is very high, or:
a hardware problem
internal battery defect
the battery is effectively not delivering any power
the percentage display is very likely incorrect
safety shutdown inside the battery protection circuit or a charge thresholds
firmware or a software/OS problem
BIOS, ACPI, Drivers, other tools, etc..calibration problem
Battery health Excellent only indicates the level of wear, not whether the battery can actually deliver power, in most cases.
Many laptops (ThinkPads, ASUS, Dell, etc.) have charge thresholds, e.g. stopping at 60%, which can be set via the BIOS, ACPI, or other tools.
What is a Lithium-ion Battery Protection IC? - Understanding the Role, Functionality, and Importance
A complete discharge / recalibration cycle plus a BIOS reset may help.
1. Let the battery drain completely until it reaches 0%.
2. Then remove the battery and start the laptop without it, and reset the BIOS. After that, insert the battery again and start the system with both the battery and the power cable connected, and check whether it can charge to 100%.
3. If it gets stuck again at 60%, repeat steps 1 and 2 After that, if possible, try booting a live OS with the battery and power cable connected and see whether it can charge to 100%.
If this is still not possible, the battery has likely developed some kind of lock or defect or the issue is likely related to the firmware, such as the battery controller, embedded controller, or BIOS/UEFI
If the battery charges in the live OS, you have a software / OS problem
If it does not charge there either, you have a hardware problem
Check whether anything from these posts can help you further.
How to extend laptop battery life? TLP and auto-cpufreq didn’t work
Further Optimizing Battery Life on HP Victus (i5-14450HX) - Linux Mint 22.3
At our company, I could check this much faster because we often have the same model multiple times. I would simply take a battery from another laptop to test it, and also put the supposedly defective battery into a different machine to see what happens
It seems unlikely that the upgrade for Linux Mint was to blame. It seems more likely to be unlucky timing. So you might want to check an alternative distribution first to convince yourself of it being hardware or software.
If you have a USB stick available you could try a Live USB to boot an alternative distribution (eg Ubuntu) to see if it behaves differently. And even try an older version to ensure that it’s not a new kernel bug.
I spent 5 years managing Lithium Ion batteries used as power plants on the UK power grid. While consumer grade laptop batteries are a bit different, one thing is still true: measuring battery health and state of charge are a dark art and liable to be wrong for any number of reasons. But state of charge is certain when the battery is full or empty.
In laptop batteries, a battery that won’t charge more than 60% is a near certain sign of a bad battery, and there are not really alternative options but to replace the battery.
The fact that it reports “excellent” health may just be that the measuring algorithm can’t detect this specific fault. These algorithms usually rely on measuring charge in/out against state of charge changes. But some faults fool the state of charge measurement which are amazingly flaky to begin with. So fooling SOC also means fooling battery health.
