R50e battery charging issue

I just got an R50e whose battery, at first, charged extremely slowly. (It took 20 minutes to go from 1% to 2%.) Then, after it attained 3%, it became 100% in about 10 minutes.

Can anyone tell me what's going on ?

The battery's meter tells me that its cycle count is 8 and it was first used in May 2009. The battery health is green.

[X-posted in forum.thinkpads.com]

 

Is this an original Lenovo/IBM Battery?

 

sounds like a faulty battery or a low quality generic battery.

 

Yeah, that's why I asked if it was an original Lenovo/IBM Battery... I bought a battery for my D620 off eBay that claimed to be an original, and it does a similar thing to yours.

 

The battery is IBM, manufactured in 2005 (when the R50e came out) and first used in 2009. The manufacturer is Panasonic. Last night it went from 100% to 80% then back to 100%.

 

the battery is probably kept too long in storage and couple of the cells are probably near failure. I would stop using it if i was you.

 

I see. Re your warning - is there a chance of it exploding ?

 

there is the always the chance of that, especially in the IBM Thinkpad batteries, since there is no safety switch circuit installed like the one on Lenovo Thinkpad.

 

Yikes.
My plan was to let the battery go through a few charge cycles, to see if it was a bad cell or a battery meter anomaly.
I admit I haven't got around to testing it. (I've been using AC power with battery attached.)
Perhaps now I should just forgo the testing and just get rid of the battery. The risk of explosion outweighs trying to find out whether it's NOT a bad cell.
???

In passing, since 9 October, the battery has not acted up. Remained at 100%.

 

it probably won't explode as such.. you could try to do a couple of discharge and recharge cycle, and see how that goes. It is no more dangerous than using a generic battery off ebay.

 

Heh, that happened to my defective Dell D600 battery. I accidentally left the laptop on in presentation mode, UNDER my comforter!! When i got home 8 hours later, the thing was so hot I could barely touch it to shut off and it started doing some weird orange flashy lights routine, like it was about to explode. I'm amazed it never went up in flames, it was a battery in the infamous Sony recall. Afterwards, the battery complained that it failed and yet it ran fine, except for only 30 minutes at a time. It had a similar charging behavior to yours. Eventually it got so bad that the battery internally heated up when I tried to charge it, and it died completely.

 

OK, so there's a chance of it exploding but not that likely given the information I provided here.

Given that I was told more or less the same thing on forum.thinkpads.com, I will test out the battery before I decide to toss it.

I also realize that I am responsible for any advice that I choose to follow or not follow on these forums, obviously.

In the end, maybe I'll just buy a new IBM brand battery - assuming I can still buy one new from a reputable seller somewhere.

 

What do you mean by "orange falshy lights routine" ? Was the laptop screen doing that ?

Re "similar charging behavior to [mine]", did your battery go from 2% to 100% to 80% etc. ALL THE TIME or only once in a while ? Since that first day my battery hasn't acted up, just stayed at 100%.

A general question for anyone : any chance of a battery (that's not been used in a while) acting up at first (like mine did) and then settling back down (more or less for good) ?