MBP battery indicator jumps from 23% to 51% and turns red

[easy-mac]

Over the last few weeks my battery health on my late '07 MBP has declined from about 79% to a terrible 39% this morning. However, just a few minutes ago something very strange happened. The charge indicator jumped from 23% to 51%, but the indicator remained red. I did a search but didn't find anything about this issue, so I thought I'd post. Has anyone seen this before?

I just calibrated my battery 2 days ago and it still showed my health as 39%, but now iStat is showing the battery health as 70%. The battery info is listed below:

Battery Information:

Model Information:
Manufacturer: Sony
Device name: ASMB012
Pack Lot Code: 0001
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 0110
Hardware Revision: 0500
Cell Revision: 0303
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 1726
Fully charged: No
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 4167
Health Information:
Cycle count: 224
Condition: Check Battery
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -1733
Voltage (mV): 10765

I've had the MBP for almost exactly 2 years, and I only have 224 cycles on the battery. I only plug it in when it needs to be charged, and I always let it charge fully before removing it from AC power. I'm just curious as to why this happened? I'm planning on buying a new battery in the future when this one becomes completely unusable, but if there's a defect with the battery I'd love to know so I can have Apple replace it for me under AppleCare.

 

[Jaro65]

The battery on my 15" MBP had only 49 cycles when I started to experience some charging issues with it, eventually resulting in the system message telling me to service the battery. I have an AppleCare and so I took it to a locak Apple Store, where after running a couple of tests, they simply gave me a new battery.

You probably need to do the same.


Good luck!

 

[easy-mac]

Ok, so I calibrated my battery again and it's now telling me that I only have 43% battery health. What's strange is that yesterday the battery lasted nearly 3 hours, but today on a full charge it died after less than 1 hour. I think there's definitely something wrong with the battery, so I'm going to make an appointment with the Genius Bar for early next week. Unfortunately, all of their appointments were booked for this afternoon and I'm leaving to go out of town tonight.

I've started keeping a log of the battery information from the System Profiler and screen shots of iStat to show the Genius what it's been doing. Is there anything else I should be doing to demonstrate the odd behavior of the battery? Thanks!

 

[w00t951]

I hope that my battery is normal... When the battery is fully charged, it usually lasts about 3 hours in Youtube. Mine is the late 2008 15.5" Medium spec computer.

 

[fluffyx]

easy-mac, if you have AppleCare, your battery qualifies for free replacement.

To get a new battery…

• visit an Apple Store, …
• visit an Apple-Authorized Service Provider (find one with this link), …
• or call 800-APL-CARE and they'll ship you one.

Best of luck.