V1S battery Wear Problem

Darn, Was wondering how they acheived the cells, I know the V1s 8 cell battery is 14.8v with two sets of 4 wired in series to achieve double the mAh. So 9 cells didnt really fit in with that as the normal 9 cell arrangement is 11.1v with 3 sets wired in series to triple the mAh, Though the modular battery is 11.1v so technically the main battery should work as a 11.1v battery to.

 

Hmm, I actually expected the V1S to be hit by this issue, while hoping it would not be so...

I would like to add as much as I can into what has been discussed here, since I'm one of the guys that had 4 motherboards and 5 batteries exchanged for their V6J, did a lot of testing, and currently still has the problem.

A. First, my "solution" / workaround this problem:

The obvious drawback: cannot use more than 2/3 of battery.

In fact, I would like to add something to what I wrote there: do not let your battery discharge past 40 (forty) percent. This is because after the battery has done many cycles (not full, but down to 40-50-60% charge and then recharge) the following thing will happen: at a charge level between 30% to 40% (unclear exactly where), the battery will jump discontinuously to 2-3% charge (reported). Upon charging, the wear will have increased by 5%.

B. Some (perhaps useful) remarks

* AFAIK it affects ALL notebook units from a given model, worldwide. Known older models affected by the issue are: V6J, V1J, R1F (therefore, also the VX1, and the VX2, since they're just souped-up V6-s and V1-s). Some others might also be affected but we don't have enough confirmed cases on the forum to say that it is definitely so.

* When the battery is new, the problem only kicks in when battery is discharged past 30% or 25%.

* Hardware replacements will not solve the issue. I have changed:
- 4 times the mainboard (which includes the charging circuitry)
- 5 times the battery
- power adapter
- the complete chassis and case
and I still have the problem.

* The wear level increase is not always monotonous, which means that wear will sometimes decrease. This will happen especially under a regime of heavy testing such as you have done. So (as an example), it might happen that wear evolves like this with an increasing number of cycles: 2, 5, 7, 5, 9 %. This means that if your wear level has decreased, you are not yet in the clear. However: I have never witnessed the wear decreasing back to 0%: so for those V1S users that have experienced this, there might still be a chance that you do not suffer of this particular problem, or you are only suffering from a less damaging version of this particular problem.

* Wear level is sometimes "accumulating in the background". What I mean by this is: assuming a 2% average wear increase per cycle; if you do 4 cycles and get a 2% wear increase only after 2 of those cycles, the "remaining" 4% of wear will be added to your wear sometime later on, after a cycle done say a few days afterwards.

* ASUS reps will be very nice about this in their communications with you, but either:
(i) nothing will ever be done at ASUS because they do not think it's worth the money and effort. This might change if enough users complain.
(ii) the problem is so difficult to resolve that they have not yet come up with a solution.

* The "don't let the notebook shutdown at 0%" workaround is a short-term solution, there is actually physical damage accumulating, it is not only a surface problem. This means that in time, "real wear" is accumulating, decreasing your battery life.

Sorry about the hectic organization of these things, I just wrote them as they came to my mind.

C. Possible causes

* Physical defect in the battery.
* Physical defect in the mainboard (charging logic and/or circuitry).
* Bad BIOS coding.
* Bad Windows ACPI drivers.

or a combination thereof.

Final remarks: It is not clear yet that the V1S suffers from the same problem, it's too early to tell for sure. Just use your notebook for a week, discharging fully (i.e. past 20%) say once a day. If your wear consistently increases (but not necessarily monotonically, i.e. might temporarily decrease once or twice) such that in the end you have added 0.5 to 2% average wear for each discharge cycle, then it is likely you are suffering from this issue.

 

Just out of curiosity, has anyone ever tested to see if this problem occured on the affected models when using a rebuilt battery?

 

What do you mean by rebuilt?

 

A battery that has been rebuilt with new lithium-ion cells. It's not that hard to do, if you know what you're doing.

 

Yep, but I doubt most of the users reporting these issues on the forum have the technical knowledge and skill / time / resources needed to perform this operation. Nor should they, this is a problem that ASUS should fix, unfortunately it's not happening.

Just adding something unrelated: In a dark sort of way, I am "happy" that this thread is turning some people away from purchasing an ASUS. This is an argument that I used in my early emails with the ASUS reps here in the Netherlands, that not fixing the issue will eventually turn customers away, in addition to the cost of always replacing batteries and motherboards for people.

 

I understand, I was just curious if someone had tried it.

 

AFAIK nobody has tried it. It would be interesting though, might eliminate some possible causes for the fault.

 

You dont have to do it yourself nor would I recomend it as Li-on cells are very dangerous, There are companies that are happy to do that for you because many older batteries are no longer sold so they just refill the casing with new cells.

 

Has anyone brought up the idea that perhaps NHC is not capable of accurately reporting battery wear?

 

For the "battery wear problem" as defined for the older models including V6J: NHC is not an issue, I have checked the battery wear with Mobile Meter and RMClock as well, and the reported numbers were consistent.

The problem is at least as deep as the ACPI drivers.

 

I absolutely agree with what EBE stated in the previous long post, but, a great summary of what has happened

I do remember last year people were discussing about creating new batteries using lith-ion cells, and stuff, I looked into this just for fun, and it turns out it is a pain to even get started, plus I have no electrical engineering, and what if a new battery doesn't solve the problem. Well, at least we can determine the problem is not the battery.

Trust me, I wish the battery WAS the problem, then this could be easily averted by Asus, by getting new batteries. But I still have a feeling this is some odd combination of the BIOS, ACPI and anything else that has to do with the battery, maybe the smart chip on the battery, i guess it isn't so smart after all.

EBE is also correct about he hidden wear as well, all I know is that it took me about 2-4 weeks to notice a significant amount of wear to affect my notebook usage. The wear % will bounce around at first, then will start to accumulate abnormally, assuming the V1S suffers from this problem.

The only thing that I still am wondering about is that since this is a global problem, why aren't the Asian in China and Taiwan, Japan and those countries complaining. I am sure with a 1+ Billion population, and the fact that Asus is much more recognized over there, should bring some question marks in the Asus Headquarters.

I mean here in North America, our population is only 1/3 of a billion, which ain't much in retrospect. I am also not sure how many V1J/P and V1S owners there are in NA. Maybe a total of 500? We know Asus ships low quantities of their products to NA because demand for them are low, due to the fact they provide products to a highend niche market.

Regardless, China, Japan, Taiwan and etc, have the population, and the money to afford Asus products at much higher rate. So they should be complaining at least 4-5 times more than we are.

Or Asus just simply doesn't care

If we compare V1JP sales to V1S sales, I bet you anything this battery wear issue is doing nothing negative it terms of sales, to Asus and the resellers.

Anyways, I'm out, going to the gym.

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

My current notebook (Medion MIM2020) shows 45% wear after 3-4 years. Lets just hope the soontobemine V1S will outperform that...

 

About Asia: we wouldn't get much of those complaints on these forums, because of the language differences... maybe some Asian user that also intersects with Asian web communities on the issue knows about related complaints.

This reason would be consistent with the theory that ASUS knows about the issue, but is either choosing to do nothing about it, or is not able to resolve it; in both cases, it's keeping it quiet in order to not have a mass of users asking for recalls (once they find out in the news that the problem has been acknowledged by ASUS), and not to hurt sales of new notebooks that inherit the issue (such as, possibly, the V1S).

 

EBE your correct, one of the only ways to know problems exist with certain notebooks is to have an online community/forum, where people can discuss it.

This is how people get to know, and lets assume there are 500 V1JP owners in North America, only 30-50 are here on the forums, some not signed up, some not apparent on the forums. Some may notice the problem without addressing the forums.

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

So can we conclude that the battery wear issue is a problem with BIOS/ACPI, not the battery itself? i.e. the battery is NOT actually at 13% (or some other absurd %) wear, it was just being inaccurately reported that way?

 

Hmm... I'd like to try this solution on the V6J and report back on the result.

 

Excellent thought. I wonder if it would be possible to switch batteries, run them on another machine, see if it reads the same.

Not that I'd think it read different, but does anyone have linux on a V1(s)? I'm curious as to what the value of /proc/acpi/battery/<batt num>/* would be. This would remove any windows ACPI issues. I don't have my linux laptop here so I can't give the exact path. A recent livecd may work too.

Just some thoughts. I don't know if they will provide anything useful, but who knows.

 

Ultim4 yes technically that's correct, but still we can't rule out 100% that the battery is fine, there's still the factor of the smart chip, which is located in the battery.

drbugs, yes your right as well, this is one of the tests I wanted to conduct, however I don't know anyone in Toronto, Ontario who will let me test this. I am awaiting for Danny to let me test it on the V1S when he comes back.

The plan is to take a worn out battery and place it in a brand new laptop, and see if the new laptop states a high wear %. If it does, then place the same battery back into my V1JP and see if the wear % is still high.

If so, this means the battery has wear, and the ACPI is reading it properply. But to be honest, I have no clue what to conclude if things turn out like this, or if for some absurd reason the wear % disappears in a new laptop. It may prove the BIOS/ACPI is at fault, but may also show the smart chip is not working fine. Or could mean the lith-ion cell are messed up. I dunno.

But yes it is worth a shot to test. So if anyone in Toronto, Ontario, wants to test, let me know. I got 2 weeks before school starts. (V1S or V1JP doesn't matter)

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

Speaking again for the V6J / older battery wear problem that we are not yet sure is the case here:

It is not at all clear that the fault is not (partly or fully) physical. As I already mentioned after a while there will be "real" wear installing, at least as deep as the battery smartchip.

Also, the Linux reads the exact same wear levels. I've always checked that with my V6J.

 

Guess that removes the windows ACPI drivers as a culprit, ie it's the bios or the battery. Tx for the 411!

Randy

 

E.B.E, what is your current actual wear %? I.E. how long does a deep discharge take now compared to when you first got the laptop?

 

I'm not EBE, but I have a V6j with the same problem (go figure). I don't know my actual percent (I hate NHC), but I am down to less than 2.5 hours (on a very good day) instead of 4.5 hours. This is on a battery that has had relatively light use, and was replaced at the end of June.

 

And that's 2.5 hrs of actual run down time sitting in the BIOS?

 

No. That is 2.5 hours of real run time (If I don't use the computer much, have it in power saving settings, so on). BIOS time means nothing to me. I know that Windows isn't the problem. I have used Windows, Linux, and done battery recalibration from the BIOS, and all contribute identically to the issue. Right now, I believe this is a faulty BIOS code issue.

 

What I meant was, was that actual run time up until the laptop would shut itself off, or is that when your OS decided to standby/hibernate?

 

That is the 2.5 hours. I was a little confused why I would just have my computer run in the BIOS for a battery life test. I have never timed the run time from after that point, but I know that it is well over 1 hour.

 

So you get well over an hour after the critical battery alarm hits? So actual run time would be about 3.5 hours? That's still pretty bad for a battery replaced in June, I suppose.

 

I cannot say how much my computer runs past the 0 mark as I never do it. My batteries are out of warranty so I am following my own advice of never discharging past 30% (40% if possible).

 

First of all, dont quote me on this since its coming straight from memory.
I read about this some time ago and the ppl thought the battery was ok by itself. It was some weirdo chip or smth that all the bat programs took their info forom that was faulty, reporting false values. You could check this by deactivating the feature "When battery level hits x% put comp int sleep". So when disabling that you could get upto several hours of runtime when all programs were announcing battery had 0% charge.

 

See my long post earlier, as well as MysticGolem's post for details on the ideas you are exposing, and why they might be wrong.

 

Count another V1 user with this problem. My father has one (don't know the exact model, it's a tablet PC) and after about six months he has 24% wear.

I will stick with Fujitsu

 

A Tablet V1? That doesn't make sense. Do you mean the R1?

 

Caleb:

Maybe that's it. He just showed me these forums and said "See? I have this problem too!". I know it's an ASUS and that its tablet. And that it has the very same problem.

Have you guys thought about writing a joint mail to ASUS signed by everyone that complains? If you check other forums on the Web you might find many more complainers and the more that sign that letter, the merrier...

Anyway, just my thoughts.

 

part of the problem is that we have people from all over, so while I have been working with North American tech support for a year, that doesn't help our austriallian friends. A joint petition might help, but we need lots of people, and a good way to to confirm this issue.

 

Caleb:

Confirmed. My father's tablet is the R1f.

I agree with you, having people spread out in the world is a drawback.

I've read here that some of you suspect that when the battery level gets below 30% the wear level jumps up by around 5%. If we want to test whether this is true, there might be a way. Can you fellas tell me if this test is possible:

- With a full battery, measure the wear level using NHC or other similar program.
- Remove the battery from the computer.
- Connect it to a resistor. You will need to know what is the adequate resistor value to discharge the battery at a rate similar to the normal discharge rate in the computer. For example, if the battery has 5000 mAh and works around 15 volts, to have it last 3 hours (a typical duration for a battery) you will need to discharge at around 5000/3 = 1666 mA = 1.666 A, so you will need a resistor with 15/1.666 = 9 ohm. Just make sure you discharge the battery to below the 30% threshold that is suspected to bump the wear level up, but not very close to 0%.
- Put the battery in the computer and charge it to full capacity.
- Measure the wear level again. If it's above the one you measured at the start of the test, the theory is confirmed.

Some of you also mention that calibrating the battery is necessary for adequate readings. Where could you stick that step? (My laptop does not have battery calibration)

For this test to be possible the battery has to have its + and - terminals reasonably accessible so you can connect them to the resistor via some wire. Also, since some people argue that the wear level will only appear after a few charges, this should be repeated a few times to see if the wear level bumps by 10-20%.

Of course, there's a drawback in this test -- you will increase the wear level of your battery!

Well, what do you guys think? Is this test feasible?

Regards,

HerrKaputt

 

I think it is feasible. The problem that I see with it is that few people here have the knowledge to do this safely. As a computer engineering student, I would almost feel comfortable doing this, but I am going to wait it out for now because Asus is doing some tests for me. That said. People should do this at their own risk, but be sure to take some precautions so you don't destroy your battery.

 

So, is the verdict still at "To Be Determined"? If this turns out to be the same battery issue, that will be a major bummer, since this is a darn nice laptop.

Caleb, whats the deal with Asus working with you? Do you have a postive vibe so far with respect to them actually wanting to figure it out? I would think if they were serious, they would have you fed-ex the laptop and battery to them, and get you to define the procedure to cause the problem.

As far as using a resistor, you'd need to figure out what the wattage would be, otherwise it would smoke the resistor. I haven't done this type of work in years (EE).

FWIW Gentech is listing the V1S-A2 version on their website, with the T7700. This is awful tempting!

 

They don't want to "fix" the V6j. They are trying a Vx1 battery (doubt it will work). If that doesn't fix it for me, then they aren't going to do anything about the V6j. That is what I said earlier in this thread. For the V1s though, it is still a current and supported model, so those are the poeple that need to be proactive about this, instead of saying, oh well, I guess its too bad.

 

Well, we have not confirmation on if there's a battery wear problem with the V1s, and probably won't for several weeks (as it can take a month for the battery wear to stabilize on new batteries after the first charge cycle).

 

Yes it affects my laptop, a V1JP, i only discovered it only after 5mths, cause i was on AC most of the time. Hope ASUS better gets a kick in their nuts and fix it

 

About the direct charging through the resistor idea:

It is possible (likely?) not to work, because probably the smartchip on the battery will first try to confirm that it's in the correct type of notebook by exchanging info with the motherboard charging logic; and only after that it will allow any charging / power exchange to be done.

I have no idea how these things are implemented but if I would implement them, that's how I'd do it, specifically in order to prevent users meddling with the batteries, having them explode in their faces and then me (as a company) having to deal with the resulting lawsuits.

About signing a collective email. That might work, but as already mentioned the problem is very difficult to detect, so it will be difficult to gather more than say 20 signatures for NA.

 

I am starting to doubt that the V1s has a battery wear problem, more it just dosent read the mAh particularly well, I had 2% wear when I left the house today, at 50% NHC was saying I had 1% wear, When I got home after fully draining the battery I took the battery out, Plugged in the notebook, put in the battery, NHC shows the mAh as exactly 75000mAh (the full capacity) This is the 6th full charge I have done.

 

Yeah, it might be a miscommunication problem between the battery and the drivers, or maybe it's just the battery transient before it settles in.

Just wait for 15-20 full cycles to be done, and if you have less than 5% wear at that point, you're definitely not suffering from the same problem as us V1j and V6j users.

 

My battery capacity varies between 72900mAh and 73600mAh after each discharge/charge cycle. I doubt there is any problem with battery wear.

 

Just to confirm, you do NOT get the battery problems being discussed in this thread? What model is your V1S?
Cheers.

 

No I do not have any problem on my Asus V1S-AJ016E.

 

He does have battery wear, just not what he considers significant, In my dell, My sisters apple, and my Sony there was no wear for almost 6 months on my sony, in the week I had the dell there was no wear, and my sisters 3 month old MBP has 1% wear.

 

I just want to add that in the vast majority of laptops I've worked with, new batteries show for a 2% to a 10% wear level after the first few weeks of use. This generally stabilizes, and is inherent in the way the batteries charge, it is perfectly normal. You may be lucky and get a battery that shows little or no wear after several months, but that is not the norm (in my experience).

 

Yes, I agree Odin243. Don't stress over 1-5% of wear percentage, if they are jumping around that mark. My multi-bay battery always jumps from 0%-2% daily, so it not a big deal. It is now currently 1%.

I am also hoping that the V1S doesn't suffer from the wear problem. Just continue to monitor it, and watch for abnormal instances, and where they start to accumulate.