Replacement Battery Woes (12-inch PBG4)

[miksat]

The old battery on my 12 inch Powerbook has only 10 minutes of battery life per cycle so I decided to buy a replacement. I've ordered replacement batteries for pre Unibody Intel macs and I've had success so I didn't really expect anything to go bad. Arrived today and I excitedly put it in only to notice something odd. It (kind of) doesn't work.

The charger changes from green to orange and the battery goes from being 0% to reading fully charged. Even more odd I turned on CoconutBattery to see that the maximum capacity of this battery was 65535mAh (obviously not true, it's just showing the highest possible number). Then it goes down to 6% out of 65535mAh which is what it should be. Then it shows 0 capacity with 0 charge. Then it goes back to being fully charged with 65535mAh, and the whole cycle repeats.

Disconnecting the charger I get like 10-15 seconds worth of backlightless battery life. I tried resetting the PRAM, PMU and NVRAM and it's obviously not a problem with the machine. The DC In jack works because it charges the old battery just fine. It's just this new battery I'm having an issue with. I wouldn't really care what capacity it showed if it actually powered the machine properly. Anyone had this issue before? Is there a way to recalibrate it? Should I just return it?

Edit: Seems like the 65Ah capacity is a common issue but those people still have running batteries, I can't get mine to charge up at all pretty much.

 

[eyoungren]

The old battery on my 12 inch Powerbook has only 10 minutes of battery life per cycle so I decided to buy a replacement. I've ordered replacement batteries for pre Unibody Intel macs and I've had success so I didn't really expect anything to go bad. Arrived today and I excitedly put it in only to notice something odd. It (kind of) doesn't work.

The charger changes from green to orange and the battery goes from being 0% to reading fully charged. Even more odd I turned on CoconutBattery to see that the maximum capacity of this battery was 65535mAh (obviously not true, it's just showing the highest possible number). Then it goes down to 6% out of 65535mAh which is what it should be. Then it shows 0 capacity with 0 charge. Then it goes back to being fully charged with 65535mAh, and the whole cycle repeats.

Disconnecting the charger I get like 10-15 seconds worth of backlightless battery life. I tried resetting the PRAM, PMU and NVRAM and it's obviously not a problem with the machine. The DC In jack works because it charges the old battery just fine. It's just this new battery I'm having an issue with. I wouldn't really care what capacity it showed if it actually powered the machine properly. Anyone had this issue before? Is there a way to recalibrate it? Should I just return it?

Edit: Seems like the 65Ah capacity is a common issue but those people still have running batteries, I can't get mine to charge up at all pretty much.

I would return it. It's a bad battery.

At this point, unless you're refurbing the battery yourself (yes, some people do that), you can't expect much from replacements.

 

[miksat]

I would return it. It's a bad battery.

At this point, unless you're refurbing the battery yourself (yes, some people do that), you can't expect much from replacements.

That sucks cause all of the Intel replacement ones (even for like 2006 era machines) all worked fine. And those have even less of a market I think.

 

[eyoungren]

That sucks cause all of the Intel replacement ones (even for like 2006 era machines) all worked fine. And those have even less of a market I think.

Yeah, but it's been getting bad for PowerPC for a while now (batteries). I got a replacement from Newertech itself for my 17" sometime in 2010-2011 I think and the replacement couldn't power the Mac on it's own for more than 20 minutes, despite my having paid for their higher capacity battery.

It's at that point that I just decided all my laptops would just be on charger. It defeats the purpose of having a laptop, but most of my use of them has been at home anyway.

I'm sure there are decent batteries out there somewhere, but I wouldn't know where to look.

Maybe whomever you bought it from could send you another? If that one also has problems then I'd just chalk it up to this.

 

[miksat]

Yeah, but it's been getting bad for PowerPC for a while now (batteries). I got a replacement from Newertech itself for my 17" sometime in 2010-2011 I think and the replacement couldn't power the Mac on it's own for more than 20 minutes, despite my having paid for their higher capacity battery.

It's at that point that I just decided all my laptops would just be on charger. It defeats the purpose of having a laptop, but most of my use of them has been at home anyway.

I'm sure there are decent batteries out there somewhere, but I wouldn't know where to look.

Maybe whomever you bought it from could send you another? If that one also has problems then I'd just chalk it up to this.

Yeah. I hope they cover the shipping if they're all just defective.