False Low Battery Warning

[MerkCity]

Dont matter what game Im playing after 5-10 mins I get a low battery message saying my battery is either 5%, 8%, or 10% and the battery is nowhere near these numbers. Support has no solution and told me to ask here. Steps Ive taken to try and fix this is multiple re-images. Ive done 4 battery drains from 100% battery to 0% then fully charged system. Nothing works. Battery health is 100% and trhe actual drain is normal its just this notification popping up every 5 mins in game saying my battery low when its not. Last game played it said my battery was 5% and it was 96%.

[LeadDreadnought]

I'm having the same problem.
Only thing I could find to fix it so far is to plug in my charging cable...

[MerkCity]

Originally posted by LeadDreadnought:

I'm having the same problem.
Only thing I could find to fix it so far is to plug in my charging cable...

Same here bro. That is the only temp fix is to plug in charger and leave it in.

[Hiro]

Have you done any changes to the hardware?
e.g. Overclock, Undervolt, opened the back, etc.

This could happen if the battery voltage fluctuates, not enough to turn the device down, but enough for the O.S. to pickup.

You could also try to put it in storage mode then remove it:
- https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/69E3-14AF-9764-4C28
- https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+Enable+Battery+Storage+Mode/149962

[MerkCity]

Originally posted by Hiro:

Have you done any changes to the hardware?
e.g. Overclock, Undervolt, opened the back, etc.

This could happen if the battery voltage fluctuates, not enough to turn the device down, but enough for the O.S. to pickup.

You could also try to put it in storage mode then remove it:
- https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/69E3-14AF-9764-4C28
- https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+Enable+Battery+Storage+Mode/149962

The support tech i spoke with walked me through all these steps before sending me to the community for help. I changed my SSD day one with my deck. That was over a year ago this issue didnt start until the 3.5 update. And you are correct the battery is fluctuating I caught it a few times last week. When the false notification shows up saying my battery is 5% when its actually at 80%+ I looked at the battery level before it changed and it was showing red 5% then flipped back to 86%. No clue what is causing this. All i did was update my deck.

[fru]

did you ever fix this, or does it still happen? started happening on my deck but I have made no modifications to it. completely stock

[Pissy Chrissy]

I am getting this as well. Feels like my steam deck is degrading way quicker than any electronic I've ever owned

[Limp Biscuit]

Same here, on top of other issues with Steam Deck throttling to 200MHz semi-permamently (issue from day one) unless it goes into the Battery Storage mode. I contacted Steam Support but they want me to reflash the thing and I've had problems ordering an SSD from Amazon. Most likely going to RMA it once I do a solid backup, without changing the files' permissions.

I wouldn't be surprised if it were a hardware fault but I think the bug could have been also introduced with the beta client.

[Apostasy]

does this still happen? happened to me a week ago when I play certain games, like Indika, Remnant 2 and RPCS3, but low spec games such as NES, N64, PS1 or PS2 games have no issue

I do notice that the temp go to 85 degrees but they said its just normal

[villagedirleton]

I'm having this problem too. Factory re set, multiple battery drains. Still not working

[spoon.exe]

Also having this issue, on demanding games like Elden ring it’s super consistent, playing gba games, it never happens.

[jandans1]

Just ran into the same issue. I have some theory about what caused this for me (maybe you had the same setup).

I was running my deck docked in 3rd party dock with 3rd-party 45W PSU. At the same time I played some demanding games like Horizon Forbidden West etc. The thing I noticed at the time was that the charging time on the performance overlay was in thousands of hours under load, but at the time I didn't think nothing of it. So now when I wanted to play on battery power I had the low battery warning and sometimes the deck shutdown on me.

My theory is that the 2 cell steam deck battery wasn't charging properly while I was playing games in the dock because I was using the charger with the same specs as the original for the dock (15V 45W) and since I added a dock with Ethernet, USB and HDMI output power consumption went up and the decks charging circuit was under powered under full load. To be on the safe side I upgraded to 100W power brick for the dock (Note: that the 15V should be rated at 100W as most of the chargers have 100W output power only at 20V.)

Regarding the battery itself it needed multiple full discharge and full charge cycles until the issue went away (till cells got somewhat in balance). Basically I discharged battery playing some less demanding games or leaving the deck in BIOS screen and after it was empty left it for few minutes until I plugged it back in. When deck was charging I left the deck powered off.

Not sure if this helps anyone, but this was my experience and theory on how the battery got to this point.

[jandans1]

Ignore my previous statement and theory.

The issue is not fixed... also you should stop playing those games where this happens until Valve fixes this issue as this is deteriorating battery health.

And I think that now I know what is happening... So long story short... I was recording a video with the performance overlay on for the support team and I managed to reproduce the issue in Pacific Drive multiple times (even the random shutdown). When I spliced the footage together I noticed that sometimes when this happens the consumption from the battery is well above 200W (let's just take into account that we don't know the refresh rate of this value so it might be higher).

So if anyone is interested here's the explanation/assumption on the issue I provided to Valve support today as well.

When playing some games the power consumption might spike (or even hold for a bit) to something that is above the rated current of the Battery and the Battery Management System living in the lipo. In BMS you have multiple protection functions so the Li-Po does not expand or catch fire one of them is short-circuit/over-current function that might get triggered when the deck is under that much load explaining the random shutdowns without warning. Another thing is that when you are drawing that much current from the lipo the voltage drops and that explains the battery warning... Meaning when the deck is under load spike you get a warning and when the load spike ends you get the old reading.

This means that there are no limits in firmware/kernel to prevent this, the deck should limit the TDP or throttle untill the load drops when under battery power. Also another interesting thing is that it's able to consume above 200W... If I'm not mistaken then the decks TDP is 15W.

P.S: Sorry for my tech rambling

[MerkCity]

My issue resolved itself. No help from valve support at all. 6+ wipes and reinstall of the software and 4+ battery drains and it still was giving false warning. Randomly I put the deck in sleep mode one night and left it off charge (Accidental). I went to turn it on the next day and it was dead which is weird because it never dies in sleep mode and the battery was well over 50%. I plugged in the charge and it boot after a few mins. I let it charge to full and unplugged it from charge and played all the same games as before and the warning never showed up until I got below 10% battery life. Its been like this ever since. Only thing different I noticed was in desktop mode my battery health is now 92% from 97% and yes it dropped a full 5%!!! Im not saying this is a fix but this is the random weird thing that fixed my deck. Ive had this issue for months!!

[jandans1]

Yeah... I had the same thing with battery health. It dropped by 5% in 2 weeks. I did firmware update, re-imaged the deck, put the original SSD in and it still didn't work . I ended up sending mine to Valve for repairs... It is currently on the way back, but I have no idea what they fixed/changed or if it will be fixed, but I will report back once I test the repaired deck. I still think that the deck pulls too much current in some cases and the battery just can't handle the load and that's the reason for random shutdowns and false battery warnings.

To be completely honest I don't think that Valve is investigating (or paying enough attention) to this issue as each ticket response was from a different person and when I provided the logs/recordings and screenshots it felt like nobody looked at them and after multiple responses just thought "Ok, truck it... Send the deck in for RMA"

[MerkCity]

My issue came back. It was gone for over a month. It started back after i installed the boxing game Undisputed along with Powertools from decky loader and disabling smt. Valve did give their warning about the game and tbh I remember installing it along with other games last time this happened. The game or turning off smt or a combination of both could be breaking something. This is a theory at best but it did happen again after that game crashed mid gameplay yesterday. No other changes were made. Currently playing lies of P and it keeps saying its 5% but the system is around 70% charged. Will report back when i decide on doing another battery drain.