Battery Health Collapsed

[Supahdenning]

So I got my Deck at the beginning of this month, been having a great time with it so far, no complaints, but now something quite curious has happened.

All of a sudden, the battery dropped to 0% and the system shut down. It would not boot again until I plugged it in, at which point it ran on passthrough and reported 13% battery health, not charging. Rebooting it again a few times had it recharged, but it still reports 13% health and only an hour duration even under minimal strain in desktop mode.

I have trouble believing that this is legitimately the battery being busted, this is quite ridiculous. I've seen a number of people reporting similar issues with the battery behaving abnormally, but none exactly like this. So what do I do?

[Supahdenning]

Aha, it is as I suspected. It dropped down to 2% at breakneck speed, and now it's stalling. I suspect it will last the entire theoretical duration of the truly healthy battery at 2%, so the problem is in how the battery is interpreted on the software level. How to manipulate that, I wonder?

[Marlock]

If the battery says it's lowbut lasts just as long as if it had a lot of charge, it's probably a callibration issue, not a defective battery

Recalibrating should solve this:

• discharge the unit as much as you can
  
  • use the Deck until it powers down from low battery
    
  • switch it back on without plugging to a charger
    
  • use until it dies or powers down again
• finish discharging it in a way that won't be interrupted (leaving it on the BIOS menu)
  
  • make sure your Steam Deck is off
    
  • plug it in using the charger
    
  • make sure the white LED is on
    
  • hold Volume+ and press the power button once to boot into BIOS
    
  • once in the BIOS menu, unplug the power supply (the system will not go to sleep in this mode)
    
  • let your Steam Deck sit overnight until it has shut down on its own
    
  • after the unit is on a black screen press the power button to ensure it does not boot and is fully discharged
• recharge and test it
  
  plug in the power supply
  • boot normally right away
    
  • check if your charge level is less than 5% (if not, something went wrong while discharging)
    
  • leave the charger plugged in until the unit reaches 100%
    
  • go to Desktop Mode and check your battery health, it should now display above 90%

(this process was originally suggested by Steam Support and quoted by another user in a previous thread, I just cleaned up and itemized the text)

if the above doesn't help or the battery health stat is low after recalibration, you might need to RMA your Steam Deck due to a real defective battery, power regulator, or something such... talk to support and they'll walk you through it

[Supahdenning]

Well, I did all that and the battery health still displays as 13%, but it lasts like 6 hours at 2% charge, so it's clear the battery is not defective. So... I don't know.

[Marlock]

Originally posted by Supahdenning:

Well, I did all that and the battery health still displays as 13%, but it lasts like 6 hours at 2% charge, so it's clear the battery is not defective. So... I don't know.

talk to support and explain what happened... unless you failed to recallibrate, it looks like you somehow got a ruined battery charge sensor

[Supahdenning]

Originally posted by Marlock:

Originally posted by Supahdenning:

Well, I did all that and the battery health still displays as 13%, but it lasts like 6 hours at 2% charge, so it's clear the battery is not defective. So... I don't know.

talk to support and explain what happened... unless you failed to recallibrate, it looks like you somehow got a ruined battery charge sensor

I'll keep trying a few times, change the procedure a bit and such, I'm really not convinced it's an actual hardware issue. The 2% charge just lasted 8 hours, it's hilarious.

[Novajone]

oddly enough someone on youtube is saying the battery thinks it at 2% but its at 99% not sure what exact cuse maybe os firmware

[PianoMan2112]

I'm having similar problems, but sometimes SteamOS thinks it's 0% and shutdown down (I even get the 3 fast flashes when trying to power up on battery); I can tell it's changed because it will run in BIOS for hours (and when I was testing Windows, it would say it's at 0%, but run for hours). Windows was the only way I could use the device, but now that I've re-imaged to try to fix it, I can't even do that.

[Supahdenning]

Originally posted by PianoMan2112:

I'm having similar problems, but sometimes SteamOS thinks it's 0% and shutdown down (I even get the 3 fast flashes when trying to power up on battery); I can tell it's changed because it will run in BIOS for hours (and when I was testing Windows, it would say it's at 0%, but run for hours). Windows was the only way I could use the device, but now that I've re-imaged to try to fix it, I can't even do that.

At first it suddenly hit 0% and shut down for me, but not afterwards. If you can't use it at all, that's really bad, it should boot as long as it's plugged in and then you can take it out in my experience. Still working on it, btw.

[Supahdenning]

Alright, I fixed it! For the most part I followed the instructions given above, but some details are important:
-The power must run out in BIOS mode, the battery has to be drained to the point where pressing the power button does not trigger the three flashes. (To speed this step up, you can run an intense game to drain the power faster)
-The system has to be charged from absolute minimum while turned off. It will turn on when you plug it in, but just take it out and it will shut off again before it can fully boot, and then it will work.
-Keep it plugged in overnight. For me it did not actually charge for some reason, it only has 6% charge now, but it reasonably projects that it will take 2 hours to charge and displays 100% battery health.
It might not work for everyone, but probably will if the problem resembles mine.

[PianoMan2112]

I coincidentally (or we compiled the same research) did the exact same thing (let the battery die in BIOS until low battery flash doesn’t even show, then charge overnight), the only difference is that I accidentally let it finish booting after the full discharge (I wasn’t expecting it to power up since I have that disabled in BIOS/UEFI), and saw it still said 80%. I unplugged and it immediately started shutdown; I plugged in during shutdown and it stayed off and charging. (Therefore, ignore the line in other posts saying to boot and make sure it shows under 5%.)

Hopefully your charge works; mine did (it powered up at 99%, and desktop mode shows the last full charge as 40.08 Wh (before it was showing 0.04 Wh, the battery showed 0.03 Wh but ran in BIOS mode for hours).

[Supahdenning]

Yeah, it's working fine now. Funnily enough, the battery health is higher than it originally shipped at(which was 99%, now 100) but all the numbers are correct. It's possible you don't even have to let it charge overnight, it seems a bit cryptic, but this method at least works.

[PianoMan2112]

I went to write up a summary, and it ended up way more detailed that I expected: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1675200/discussions/1/3410929406907189844/#c3410929406910673700 (I'll edit and add your overnight not needed option).

[Aaron-of-Rivia]

Not only did Marlock's suggestion work but it now shows battery health at 100% (before it was showing 5%).

The issue I noticed is that when I was first trying to let it drain, it would fall to 3% battery life in the amount of time I would usually play before using my charger.

I never let the battery drain completely to 0% and I think the system just assumed that was the actual battery life overall. I could play on 3% for almost an entire hour before giving up and putting it in Bios mode and letting it die entirely overnight. Thanks Marlock! My Steam Deck seems to be functioning fine now.

[Speedy☆☺]

Use a slow charger, fast charging can confuse the state of battery.

[CJM]

Originally posted by Speedy☆☺:

Use a slow charger, fast charging can confuse the state of battery.

Or confuse it less anyway. I was using a Macbook Pro charger which would switch to a slow charge on the Steam Deck, the state of the battery was still confused...

I am just completely ignoring the battery health because it is less than useless.