XPS

[Puvikkarasan]

A week back, I have brought XPS 13 and received it a couple of days back. I have never achieved the battery life suggested on the dell website for the laptop. I agree it varies by usage and setting preferences. My expected battery life is between 5-6 hours after a full charge with zero screen brightness, no Bluetooth device connected, no Netflix streaming, battery set to balance, and power mode as best battery. I have seen some comments after driver and BIOS updates, it should be better but even that has not helped to improve battery life. It gives me great disappointment with your premium device. 

And once more small inconvenience faced by using the laptop while working in COMSOL. There is some graphic rendering problem and can not see the output images. I have graphic rendering setting as my other Dell Lattitude 5480 laptop which has core i3 7th gen processor.

I really love the performance and other features of the laptop and that is the reason for choosing it over other premium devices. Please provide a solution to overcome these.

[Unhappy Canadian]

@WJProctorWhat still shocks is the party line that is always, ALWAYS followed...that 2 hours (or 20 -30 minutes per cell) is "normal".  It is also shocking that almost no one, even supervisors and managers, appear aware of their company's own ads, to say nothing of independent reviews.  I literally...yes literally...had to guide their screens (during remote diagnostics) to show them these promotions on Dell's own website.

Almost all the agents I spoke to (many dozens) were completely polite and even friendly.  But it looks like they were just given a short script from which to read. 

Some made valiant attempts to explain the obvious discrepancies.

For instance, that benchmark tests are done with the best or most ideal systems, so the ones we own won't live up to them.

But others gave the exact opposite!  That better systems will drain more power!

In the end, the obvious contradictions were just ignored.  Remote diagnostics did not find anything so our computer is working properly.  End of story.

Maybe the worst aspect of all this is the extreme difficulty, even impossibility of escalating issues to a level that might achieve a satisfactory solution.  Instead, the most usual outcome is to be put on an unending merry-go-round, shoved from one department to the next and back again and again and again and again and again and again....

Of course, most people will just give up.

[WJProctor]

I was told the quoted time was ludicrous , it could never be achieved! 

[firstHandScientist]

Hi FlashKartoon,

I also ordered an xps 9310 2-in-1 with touch screen and killer wifi. it is delivered with Windows and I am going to install linux on it. Same to your case, I am a Ubuntu user.

Could you release a bit more details of your case? I would appreciate your reply.

1. Your Ubuntu os is generic image or customized  Ubuntu by Dell? If would be helpful to post the ubuntu image download link. After solving the battery drain issue, how is your battery life time now?

2. Do your have dual boot of windows and ubuntu or standalone ubuntu?

3. Does the stylus PN579X work fine on Ubuntu?

Thank you in advance.

[amel22]

I have the same issue with a new XPS13 9310, BIOS version 2.0.0 from 01/28/2021.  So, the issue was either not resolved by a previous BIOS update release or there's a regression.  The issue here, as far as I can tell, is that there seems to be no option available to suspend the system to a "deep" state.  Instead, there is only the "s2idle" option available, which merely turns off the display.

See the following output as evidence:

# cat /sys/power/mem_sleep 
[s2idle]

So, I just realized that there is no s3idle option either.  While s2 can be used for a faster way to get the system from a suspend state, it's not at all clear why there are no other options available at all.  According to the linux kernel documentation, s2idle is always available, while the other options are dependent on platform support: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/power/states.txt

The meaning of the "mem" string is controlled by the /sys/power/mem_sleep file.
It contains strings representing the available modes of system suspend that may
be triggered by writing "mem" to /sys/power/state. These modes are "s2idle"
(Suspend-To-Idle), "shallow" (Power-On Suspend) and "deep" (Suspend-To-RAM).
The "s2idle" mode is always available, while the other ones are only available
if supported by the platform (if not supported, the strings representing them
are not present in /sys/power/mem_sleep). The string representing the suspend
mode to be used subsequently is enclosed in square brackets. Writing one of
the other strings present in /sys/power/mem_sleep to it causes the suspend mode
to be used subsequently to change to the one represented by that string.

[amel22]

Latest BIOS update does not at all address this design flaw.  I'm still not sure if this is a hardware limitation or just something that a firmware/software update could fix. 

# dmidecode |grep 'BIOS Revision'
        BIOS Revision: 2.1
root@xps13:~# cat /sys/power/mem_sleep 
[s2idle]

[DELL-Cares]

Hi,

I have replied to you from a private message.

-Gautam.

[amel22]

I'm cautious at this point, but I have to say that it does seem that there is an improvement after the BIOS upgrade to version 2.1.  The battery does not drain (as quickly?) while in suspend mode anymore.  I'm still hoping to hear back from the engineering team about the possible limitations or lack thereof when it comes to providing an alternative suspend mode for this system.

On a side-note, the BIOS/UEFI upgrade procedure has greatly improved since the last time I tried to do that.  The built-in BIOS Update utility also provides a way to connect to dell servers and download the update without the need to use a separate USB device.  While I have had this option offered from other vendors, I was not sure that it would be possible without an ethernet connection.  Anyway, great to see the improvements, including the option to use the WLAN adapter from within the UEFI.

[WJProctor]

It’s interesting there is a lot of talk about sleep etc. I’m just talking about normal usage. I have noticed the Windows battery monitor is all over the place. The estimated life goes from 4:15 to 1:45 in one jump. Sometimes it then goes back up. Very erratic 

[amel22]

That, to me, sounds like the CPU governor (or w/e the Windows equivalent is) going from powersave mode to "performance" mode, along with how that battery indicator calculates the estimated time and/or if there is a delay at some point before it seemingly jumps to that much shorter time. 

I'm assuming you have the same setup as me, the i7-1165G7.  As an example, while browsing the internet and doing light tasks right now, my CPU runs at about 1.2GHz in "powersave" mode.  Given the fact that the Maximum for this CPU is 4.7GHz, I can imagine a huge difference in how long the battery would last between these two scenarios. 

If you are sure that the battery does not last very long regardless of the workload, then it may be a bad battery that doesn't hold its charge.  However, I would assume that it wouldn't get to that point in less than a year of ownership; especially since the UEFI/BIOS allows for tuning how the battery is charged or used, increasing the longevity.

[WJProctor]

So I have found an improvement. When you change the power plan there is an option to change the max processor state. I have set that to 50% on battery. I’m currently on 89% with 8hr 42m. 

Finally some success!