Battery indicator shows 9% battery when discharging from 7% to 6%

[UsernamesAreNotMyThing]

Your system information

• Steam client version: Current stable as of 4/2/2024
• SteamOS version: Current stable as of 4/2/2024
• Opted into Steam client beta?: No
• Opted into SteamOS beta?: No
• Have you checked for updates in Settings > System?: Yes

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

The battery indicator on the status bar shows 9% battery when discharging the battery from 7% to 6%, and this also affects the battery symbol on the taskbar in desktop mode.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. Discharge the battery from 7% to 6%.

[andresC94]

Your system information Steam client version: Current stable as of 25/6/2024 SteamOS version: 3.5.19 Opted into Steam client beta?: No Opted into SteamOS beta?: si Have you checked for updates in Settings > System?: Yes

I have seen the same behavior. Also, the percentage varies from desktop mode to game mode by 1-2% and usually never shows 99% while charging in desktop mode. It jumped from 98 to 100%.

i updated to the main channel bios but still persist. i still have to discard if the charger is faulty but seems to work properly until it reaches the last percentages of charge and the battery holds charge just fine.

Maybe this could be related.

[manuelafm]

Results with an OLED model here, SteamOS 3.7 (20240829.1000).

Firstly, with this more recent OS version, I cannot observe the behaviour described w.r.t displaying 9% when discharging from 7% to 6%. I can see all of 9%, 8%..., 5%. And when plugging the cord, goes up again, showing all numbers in between. Has this been fixed for you with more recent versions, or does this still persist? Please include the current version that you're using now, and if it's an OLED or an older LED model.

About precision. There are several places where this information can be retrieved or derived from. For example dividing the content of /sys/class/power_supply/BAT1/charge_now by ../charge_full. This is summarized in ../capacity (which actually means "percentage of of charge"), and it's the calculation above but truncated to integers (rounded down). So 10.99% would be truncated to "10%". These are not updated instantly, but every few seconds (5 or so).

Similar information is available with upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT1, under percentage. The calculation seems to be slightly different, maybe using other fields, reading at slightly different times or perhaps the rounding up of the software that I'm using messes things a bit, but it's very similar to what I described above: when it goes below 10.95% or so, it shows 10%.

The default Game-mode seems to be a bit more precise rounding up the raw numbers, so for 10.51 shows 11% and for 10.49% shows 10%. Desktop-mode is using the summarized values from upower or reading the information directly from the files, and thus show either the same % or 1% less (with the time that takes switching from one to the other, it could easily become 2% in some cases).

I'm not sure which approach is better, if the more precise or the most conservative. When dealing with charge, fuel mileage etc, UIs tend to be more on the conservative side; and for example show 0% when it fact there's still significant charge/fuel left.

So, in summary, what is describes regarding the precision issues seems down to a variation of ~0.5% when rounding up fractions, no other underlying differences. I assume that similar case happens, but haven't actually tested, with the mention of 98-to-100%, some kind of difference in rounding up when estimating and showing "100%" when receiving events from the battery that it's "full", regardless of remaining fractions. And reports from the battery hardware itself are not totally instantaneous nor fully accurate, so it adds imprecision to all of this. I don't think that it's anything more serious than that.

[manuelafm]

Trying with a LCD unit, 3.6.11 (20240827.100) I also cannot reproduce the initial problem reported of the indicator showing 9% when discharging from 9 to 6.

[andresC94]

Hi, i tested today, and it keeps happening. In the latest stable update today, when transitioning from 7 to 6 it goes up to 9 and back to 6.

[manuelafm]

Is this just instantaneous? Like "7% for many seconds" -> "9% for like 1 second" -> "6% for many seconds" -> "5% for many seconds" ...

Or is it more like: "7% for many seconds" -> "9% for many seconds (>10)" -> "6% for many seconds (>10)" -> "5% for many seconds" ...

And does it change just once, or flipping back and forth between 9% and 6%?

(Perhaps it's easier for you to attach a small video).

[UsernamesAreNotMyThing]

It starts showing 9% immediately when reaching 6% and eventually will correctly show 6%.