Laptop reporting incorrect battery capacity

Unfortunately I have a  Inspiron 13-5378, which has a built in battery. It looks like you only have to remove the bottom panel to get to the battery, but I'd like to avoid doing that if it isn't necessary. I will be trying these instructions on calibrating the battery and will update my post if they work. https://www.ultrabookreview.com/20942-calibrate-laptops-battery-fix-inaccurate-wear-info/ I'm not expecting my laptop to have it's original battery life. I just want to know how much battery I actually have. I've been using it for well over an hour at what is being called 0% battery.

Try the reset on the system. Keep in mind however that that average battery life is 1-2 years or about 400 recharges. To reset  the system disconnect the battery and adapter then press and hold the power button for 30 seconds. Then reconnect everything and see if the battery charges normally.

Also the following from the Microsoft site might help.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-to-fix-the-wrong-estimate-time-on-battery-life/7a8eb173-75bb-4f30-be5b-9539453aca8f

I tried calibrating the battery with mixed results. The first time I attempted to do so,  I completely drained the battery and then plugged in the AC adapter. the reported battery level quickly rose to 98%. After about 30 minutes with no change in the battery level, I unplugged the charger, thinking that the battery was fully charged. I was wrong. The full charge capacity dropped to just 1,000mWh in the battery report. I then tried a second run at calibrating the battery. I plugged the laptop back in and let it charge until it reported a fully charged battery. I drained the battery again and then let the battery charge back up. The battery report was unchanged at this point. I let the battery fully drain again and then ran the battery report, which now reported the capacity to be about 4,500mWh, a small improvement over where I started out. I plan to run a few more cycles of fully charging and discharging the battery to fully calibrate the battery. I expect that it will get up to around 10,000-15,000mWh, based on the fact that the discharge took a bit over an hour with a power draw that was around 10W according to both battery monitoring apps that I used.

Hi matthewgx,

Thanks for posting.  Apologies that your system is not performing as expected.

The amount of time the system shows your battery will last depends on a variety of things, mostly how much and which programs you are running, the brightness of the screen, etc.

Here is information from the Dell knowledge base you may find helpful:

Checking Battery Health Status on Dell Laptops and Notebooks

How to Troubleshoot Dell Laptop Battery Issues

If you need additional assistance and the system is under warranty, please contact me privately. Be sure to include your personal information (name, address, telephone, email) and your computer's service tag number in your message. Thanks.

If there is no warranty, then you could contact our Out of Warranty team to get a quote for a paid service call.

Dear sir ,

I'm not talking about how much the battery lasts.

I'm talking about battery health.

My laptop is under warranty (4months old) and it is the second battery with the same problem

First battery showed 80% heath after only 1 month.

Dell recognised that this is not normal and sent me a new battery which had 99% health.

Now , after 3months battery shows 83%health. And not only this. As you can see in the above logs battery helaths goes up and down periodically.

This does seem normal to you?

Yes.  Here is information you may find helpful:

That's an absurd and uneducated response.  Yes, batteries reduce over time.  They do not reduce 20% over a few months.  If that was how batteries worked, portable electronics would never have taken off.

I have an Inspiron 7000 series with the same issue.  I haven't started addressing it yet, as I'm not looking forward to having to waste a lot of my time back and forth with tests and Dell support.  Battery health dropped almost 10% within the first few weeks - of which it had light use.  It's now down almost 20% - again with extremely light use - as I approach the 6 month mark.

Of note - my Lenovo laptop, which is 2 years old, has had virtually no degredation of battery health.  Neither has my iPhone, which is 6 months old.  Or my iPad, which is 4 years old.  And so on.

So does anybody have solution how to calibrate capacity sensor data? I have faced the same problem: wear level changes between 13% and 18% after each recharge cycle and i'm also able to use my laptop for 20-30 minutes with 0% battery.

Also have same issue with inspiron 7373. 1.5 year old laptop, changed battery 3 months ago and now new battery shows only 46% health. So to recap original battery completely gave out just after the warranty expired, and second battery lost more than half its capacity in 3 months. My 4 year old hp that is used EVERY DAY has 73% battery health. After 4 years. Dell needs to figure this out and figure it out soon or THIS WILL BE THE LAST DELL I BUY AND RECOMEND.

In case anybody at DELL actually cares (which i highly doubt) here's what i tried to resolve the issue. I updated bios to the latest .15 version which says it will fix issue with 1% battery on the inspiron 13 7373 (it did not.) I replaced with new battery, ran computer with battery disconnected a couple times, reset cmos by unplugging button battery, power cord, and battery. Still same issue. I have photos of laptop running stress test for 45 minutes at 0% battery life. STRESS TEST WITH BRIGHTEST SCREEN SETTING. Until the battery voltage dropped to around 9v at which point computer shut down. Which is when a 3 cell li-ion battery is considered dead. 

With normal use i can get roughly 2 hours more use AFTER windows and bios says that i my battery is at 0%

So far since new this laptop needed a new cpu fan (1st one was noisy rattling and squeaking) new speakers (left speaker started buzzing instead of emitting sound,) and now the battery issue.

I would greatly appreciate it if someone could help me fix my HELLish DELL.

Try updating your BIOS because dell will probably say they fixed the issue in bios. But rest assured nothing is better. 

weird....my Inspiron 13 7000 also reported incorrect battery capacity  sometime this week. And now refuses to start ...light comes on then just shuts off!!!...and Ive only had this for  about 5 months..