X120e Battery Problem

[ritchie11]

Hi,

I bought my x120e about a month ago, and it's been great since then, but recently I've had issues with the battery. When I charge the battery to 100% and then disconnect the AC adapter, the battery is fine for one or two hours and the charge will decrease at a normal, steady rate (indicated by the percentage). However, when the battery gets to 75-80%, it then suddenly jumps down to 10%, and I get a message that I have to charge the laptop or turn it off. When I plug it in and start charging again, the battery charges at a normal rate from 10 to around 40%, but then the same thing happens and it jumps up to 100%, telling me it's fully charged. Generally, I would be happy with such a quick charge, but in this case the battery isn't really fully charged because it suddenly dies after I disconnect it from the adapter. Even if I leave it to continue charging at 100%, the same thing happens.

So, I was wondering if I could do something to fix this on my own, or if I should just send it back on the one-year warranty. Please tell me if I was unclear in describing the problem, and thanks for any help/suggestions!

[ZaZ]

You might want to look in Power Manager to check the battery. It'll tell you the number cycles, the remaining charge capacity and whether the battery is good.

[ritchie11]

UPDATE:

So I did the battery gauge reset that someone else recommended, and the power manager tells me my battery can only hold 69% of its original charge and is in poor condition. After reading the power manager help contents, I learned that detaching the battery when its 100% charged and keeping the AC Adapter connected when fully charged will deteriorate the battery, but given these mistakes on my part, it seems ridiculous that my battery has deteriorated 31% (practically one-third!) after only a month's use. I didn't use the laptop that much over the last month, and I never had this problem with my previous (crappy) HP laptop. I feel like the answer to this question will be no, but is there any way to reverse this deterioration? Also, since it seems defective, should I just send the laptop back and hope I get a new battery? Thanks for the help.

[ZaZ]

It never hurts to ask.

[ritchie11]

Just wanted to post an update. I thought that my explanation of my battery problem gave a negative perception of the x120e and lenovo thinkpads in general, but I called lenovo's customer service today, and after only 15 minutes, the representative verified the problem (the battery was indeed defective) and had a new battery sent to my house. All in all, I'm very satisfied, and I think this battery issue was only an isolated case. The battery is supposed to come in 2 days!

[iMav]

I'm having the same issue with my battery...and I thought it was due to poor power management under Ubuntu. Now that I read you issue, perhaps I simply have a bad battery as well??

This last time I tested it, I didn't watch closely, but know that in under one hour, it went from 100% to 10% (asking me to plug it in).

I've already had the motherboard and keyboard replaced on this thing...perhaps I just got a lemon all around? Will customer service handcuff me into installing windows to troubleshoot the battery issue?

[ninjackn]

I know no one has posted in this thread in almost a year but I just have to vent my disappointed, my X120e battery has also died prematurely. About 30 seconds after you unplug it from the AC adapter the battery will drop from 100% to 0% (the battery LED also goes from green to orange) and will shutoff in a few minutes after that. I bought it 2/9/2012 from Woot.com but apparently the warranty was only covered up until good to 2 weeks ago so it looks like I'm out of luck.

[iMav]

I was able to have my battery replaced and it has worked great ever since.