Battery Indicator Light Behavior
A reader question prompted today’s post and digging into the answer brought me further into the fascinating world that our usability team inhabits.
Reader Alex wanted to ask about the behavior of the battery LED lights on his ThinkPad T60.
As he writes, the battery LED behaves as such:
- Charging -> Green, intermittent blinking ( etc etc)
- Charged, and still Plugged in -> Green, constant on
- Running on battery -> Green, constant on
- Running on battery, low -> Orange, constant on
- Running on battery, very low -> Orange, steadily blinking
He was okay with most of it, but he wondered why the first category (charging) didn’t behave more like this: Charging -> Orange, constant on or Green but steadily blinking (similar to the turn signal on a car). His reasoning was that it would be more consistent with how other battery devices operate and perhaps be more intuitive.
When we went to our latest generation of products, would you believe our usability team actually studied this very topic in minute detail? With previous generation ThinkPad designs (pre-anything with a “60″ in its name), the light’s behavior was not well understood by most customers. The color amber and the blink rate were used incorrectly based on standard usability principles. Most significantly, the LED behaved differently in different circumstances. The team determined it was a mess.
With the current generation, the team wanted to address all of these issues and make it so that even if the system was not powered up, a user could look at the battery indicators and accurately determine battery status. As a result, this is what they came up with:
When your system is plugged into the wall and charging, the light changes status as the battery moves through charge states. When battery level is critically low (below 5%), it uses amber and blinks rather rapidly. As the battery moves from 5 – 20% charged, the light becomes steady with an occasional blink. Greater than 20% charged, it changes to green, but maintains an occasional blink. Above 80% charged, it becomes solid on all of the time. (More specifics are available on the chart above).
Discharging is a bit different. From 100 – 80%, the light will stay a solid green. From 20 – 5%, it will change to solid amber to indicate that the battery is nearing time to be charged. Below 5%, it will start blinking amber to show that battery level is critical.
When we did have blinking, our team wanted it to be subtle to avoid the “bling” effect where it would be gaudy and annoying. The only exception is when the battery is critical — in which case subtlety is definitely not what you want.
I hope this gives you a new appreciation of some of the things our design and usability teams think about. While these sorts of things are subtle to many, they are part of the ownership experience of using a ThinkPad.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:26 am
Matt,
Great information on the battery indicator. Many of us are still waiting for information on the free pen from the survey. There are several of us who have asked for status and maybe you haven’t seen these posts as it is an old topic. Can you please look into this again? Thanks.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:26 am
speaking of battery charge issues, Matt, have you gotten anything back from the tech teams about thinkpads’ inability to follow power manager’s custom charging rules (e.g. only charge when below 40%, etc) if the AC adaptor is plugged in before the machine is powered on?
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:43 am
I dislike, that the light is solid on above 80%, even though the battery is still charging. So I can not see, if the battery is fully charged – e.g. before a longer trip. I have to turn on the thinkpad, to check if it is ready. This was better in the older series like T40.
May 2nd, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Thanks so much Matt for posting this! The chart you posted definitely helped me understand why Lenovo chose the indicator’s current design!
May 2nd, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Agree with Teddy.
May 2nd, 2007 at 5:05 pm
What I would love to see on thinkpads is an indicator on the battery itself as is on new Dell and Apple batteries which shows you how charged it is when a button is pressed – its a small thing but its one of the few things i really like on the Dell we just got for comparison reasons
May 2nd, 2007 at 5:58 pm
I’d suggest pushing blink stop to >90%… say 95%
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:28 pm
I also agree that not being able to tell when the battery is fully charged is a concern. I still use a T40p (waiting for Santa Rosa models), and I travel quite a bit, so I depend on the ability to tell at a glance whether the battery is fully charged. While I greatly appreciate the thought that went into the design of the new system, I do feel that this is a non-trivial oversight.
Great discussion – keep up the good work, Matt!
May 3rd, 2007 at 4:54 am
That’s great! I haven’t noticed since I don’t use the battery very much.
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:44 pm
I think the current (T60) blinking rate when charging is way too low. As stated before, it’s pretty difficult to ‘quick check’ if the charging has completed while the machine is off.
I then always end up staring at the led thinking “so.. did it just blink or was it my imagination?”
I understand that you want to avoid too much ‘bling’, but there has to be a better solution even without rapid blinking. Maybe by introducing a third led color or an additional “charge” led.
Also, as mentioned before, the battery manager’s charge/discharge treshholds are practically useless when the machine is turned off. To prevent the battery from being charged when plugging in the chord, I have to boot windows using the battery, then plug in the cable, and then shut off again. Making that function independent from the energy manager (a bios option that somehow directly communicates with the charging mechanism and also works when the machine is turned off would be ideal) would be a huge advantage.
May 3rd, 2007 at 4:42 pm
I’d like to see a feature to see the status of the battery by pressing a button on the battery itself. If even Dell can build something like that, I think that Lenovo should be able to do it as well.
May 4th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
I agree with Teddy on the issue to not blinking even when the battery isn’t fully charged.
Also would like to see a Dell like battery indicator, either on the battery itself or on the ThinkPad. I love that feature on my old Inspiron.
May 5th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Matt,
thanks for describing the battery charging signs. I have another question for you that is battery related:
is there a way to create a profile in the power manager that would disable the transparency effects of Windows Vista, e.g. for a battery operated power profile, and while it is attached to the normal power supply Aero/transparency is enabled?
If that is already available, I didn’t find it, if not that might be a feature for the power manager.
Thanks for your blog, MCheiron
May 6th, 2007 at 7:02 am
My T43 started redlining and going dog slow a few months ago when I went to the Lenovo website and let it install “updated” utilities. One of the things that happened is that I now have two battery miser icons on the taskbar. Our IT people are no use. Any idea what this is all about?
May 7th, 2007 at 7:05 am
You should look into the Lenovo 3000 Notebooks placing the cable indicator (DC-IN) like Thinkpads. And the Bluetooth driver too. In almost all Lenovo 3000 Notebook you can send a file via Bluetooth but receiving is not working.
May 10th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Craig Butcher: Right… I had the same issue and the battery icon is not updating / resizing to fit the taskbar as frequent when necessary (e.g. during switching between virtual desktops with ATI’s MultiDesk) the it looks ugly
that’s a machine in XP
May 24th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
I have to agree with the previous entry. Why is it that three months on you have failed to match the promises you made about the tablet pens? If this is your idea of customer satisfaction the all the goodwill generated by this blog is completely wasted.
June 11th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
I brought up the differently behaving charge light in March. Thanks for the very informative information
from the Lenovo design team.
The battery icon should NOT stop blinking until the battery is at 100%. I should not have to stare at the
battery for over 5 seconds (time interval between blinks) to see if it does blink or not.
The 5-second interval should be 2 seconds, with a definitive blink (100ms) to avoid the situation Felix
mentioned- did the ICON blink or did my EYES blink?
At 98% the 2-second blink should transition to a 3-second blink. At 100% the 3-second blink should
transition to a solid green (no blink).
I appreciate the fact that Lenovo analyzed this whole thing, but perhaps they OVERthought it. I believe
my suggestion is blends Lenovo’s objective to reduce ambiguity with the ability to make better use of the
icon.
I’m not sure I agree with the on-battery charge indicator. That complicates the battery pack.
What would REALLY be cool is to allow the user to define their own battery indicator thresholds, maybe as a
tab in Power Manager. Then everyone will be happy.
July 29th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
i have a dell 8100. recently i plugged it in a hotel outlet. i believe it shorted. since then the charge light flickers amber but doen’t charge either battery.
August 6th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
FWIW, something funky going on w/ my battery light on T60p: Blinking orange (fast), and yet Power Meter shows Total battery power remaining: 99%.
Major problems earlier: PC froze; powered down, back up, but froze at Windos login screen; powered down, back up, but froze at Windows XP screen (prior to login screen).
Machine was running very hot. That may have been the problem. It’s also very humid here. Conceivably that was the problem.
In any case, I am able to boot the machine without any difficulty now – except for the confusion with the battery light per above.
Any thoughts / suggestions?…
Thanks.
September 9th, 2007 at 7:37 am
I had a similar problem to Matt.
It has now extended so that the computer crashes often.
It no longer needs the battery to be blinking orange.
It seems to happen most of when doing graphically instensive things and when the power is plugged in.
The computer will usually feel very hot.
If I attempt to reset immediately there is trouble.
If I wait an hour it is fine for a bit.
Any idea?
Mike
October 1st, 2007 at 6:08 pm
I found this when doing a google search on “thinkpad battery blinking orange”. This just started happening on my year old T60p today! Since this summer, I’ve had the same problems Matthew Weymar describes – my machine is running VERY hot, and sometimes it ends upp shutting down itself. If I for any reason need to reboot, it will hang at the XP screen, and the only thing that helps is powering off and letting it cool down.
What’s going on??
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:20 am
Hi, well I want to know if you know a case like this, let me know how to fix it. Let me explaion you, I have a X60 and yesterday, when I was working (AC Plugged) the Battery Led did begin BLINK VERY FAST, how I saw this for first time, then I did unplug the AC an the Laptop did power off.
I Did check the AC and is working. Now I can use only plugged the Laptop, and the battery reports 97% of charge in th O.S. But still blinking amber, rapidly and never stop.
Thanks for you help.
November 2nd, 2007 at 5:58 pm
Hi,
I would really appreciate if someone could help me figure out whats wrong with my battery.
It appears dead because my laptop wont run on the battery. It wont even recognize the battery when its plugged in. Therefore I have to run it on external power supply.
When I plug the battery in, it blinks 5 “red light” times and then stops blinking. What does this mean?
THanks in advance.
November 19th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Battery shows 100%, but when plugged in, has started blinking in orange. I haven’t been able to figure this one out. What am I missing?
November 26th, 2007 at 11:11 am
My issue is similar to the previous post, but not quite exactly the same. It appears that my T60 won’t charge the battery at all. The laptop works great when plugged in, but the battery indicator continues to blink amber, and the “percent full” indicator is stuck at 4%. I am afraid to hibernate the laptop, for fear the 4% will be used up. I have tried charging with power on and power off, but it doesn’t seem to have an effect on the battery at all. Is there a Power Manager setting or some other tool I can use to get the battery to charge?
November 28th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
I’m having a similar issue w/ my 1.5 year old z60m — blinking orange battery light…will crash if I unplug w/o shutting down even though all the power meter data says it is fully charged and in good condition.
Would appreciate any insight into a solution.
Thanks,
Dan
February 19th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Follow up to previous post:
Not a lot to add, but something.
I ended up taking my machine in. The tech found nothing wrong with it. He – very courteously – cleaned it very thoroughly, however, including blowing the fan out(!), and it has been running much more smoothly.
Here is my hypothesis: The machine was not cooling itself effectively – probably because the fan was too dusty, but of course, this could be a design flaw as well (i.e., fan not powerful enough to cool machine from temperatures that will be reached under more or less “normal” operating conditions).
When the machine gets too hot, it shuts down, among other reasons, to save the CPU and/or motherboard. Question: Can anyone confirm that these machines include this functionality?…
Bottom line: If it’s under warranty, take it in, and make sure they do a thorough cleaning.
March 12th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
I just put a new battery in my older A20m (yes I know how old it is but it works flawlessly – or has till now) as the old one had 255 cycles, was showing red for health and a seriously diminished maximum capacity. The new battery was a 5.4k rather than the original 3.6k mAh. I followed the recommendations to charge it adn let it run down to 10-20% and recharge it a couple of times to initialize it.
My problem is that after letting it run down the last time, the laptop sits there with the orange light blinking and doesn’t seem to be charging, or changing indicator. The battery Maximizer utility shows 1-3%, the battery info shows 53.78 Ah charged, 54 Ah capacity and green health.
This would seem to indicated the battery is ok and almost fully charged but the charge indicator on the laptop says it is at critical depletion. Can someone please advise?
May 12th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
[...] week I got the dreaded flashing amber battery indicator on my ThinkPad X60, and it wasn’t the good kind of [...]
June 12th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
I bought a slightly used 8.2ah second battery (IBM brand) for my t60.
My first battery is showing signs of the 18 months of daily use.
The PC doctor analyzing tool is giving it a 20% (capacity charge) live left.
The problem with the “new” battery is a fast blinking critical bat icon. It freezes the laptop at boot even if plugged in mains.
I left it overnight to charge but it took one minute to freeze again. Enough time to use PC doctor… 60% battery life left.
Could it be that it was left uncharged to long?
according to the dealer I bought it from it was still fine when he used the battery.
Are the a way to reset the chip in the battery?
July 20th, 2008 at 11:02 am
My battery light is on green constant but the battery gauge says that it is charged to 97% and charging with no ‘0.0′ current (so in fact it is fully charged at 97%).
Lenovo 3000 N200 with XP SP2. Now the power management that is used with the Vista version does not seem to work with XP. That is the the software for XP provided by Lenovo for Vista styled ‘Battery gauge & power management” does not work or it says it won’t work with XP!
Can some one please tell me how I can set my battery charge thresholds like I could in Vista but this time in XP assuming that I can’t get the Vista styled power management to work in XP?
What are the reg edits for this or can someone post the XP software download required to do this?
SC
August 16th, 2008 at 5:02 am
bluetooth, wireless, power on, “power plug” LED does not work even though they are turn on. does this happen to any of you?
September 21st, 2008 at 5:23 pm
I have a Lenovo 3000 N200. I just had to buy a new ac adapter for it as the cord was broken and so was the tiny resistor inside it. I received the new ac adapter and thaought my troubles were over. However when I plugged it in the little battery light on the laptop blinks orange a couple times then goes out. The laptop will not start up. I would think that even if the battery was stone cold dead it should start when plugged in, but does not. Can anyone help?
Thanks.
Jim
December 25th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
To all of those who are having the fast blinking battery icon issue.
This means that your battery has failed and that you must replace it with a new one. If you see this error, remove the battery IMMEDIATELY as further use can cause the charge mechanism on the system (your laptop – not the battery) to be damaged or fail, thus also negating using any other battery with your system.
Also be advised that this issue is common with these models effected: R60, R60e, T60, T60p, X60, X60s X60 Tablet, Z60m, Z61e, Z61m, Z61p, Z60t, and Z61t. For more help google “ThinkPad battery will not charge or discharge and gives an “irreparable damage” or “battery cannot be charged” error message”, and if you have a X60 Tablet, at time of writing, this battery can still be replace under this program, for free. Everyone else will have to pay tho.
I with my Z61m am off to by a 9-Cell monster to give this bad boy 2 – 2 and a half more years of life!
April 12th, 2009 at 2:40 am
Hi guys!
I think it would be better if the battery indicator goes off when the battery is fully charged. In this way, we will not have to look for any blinking of the indicator to determine the charge status of our battery.
April 12th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
My x60 is exactly 3 years old and its original IBM 8-cell is experiencing memory effects. The cycle count is only 180, it’s a gently used battery.
I admit I really enjoyed that 5.5-hour life with constant wifi.
I think that too often I let the battery go down to its 4% threshold that triggers a hibernate. Six weeks ago it starting charging up only to 38%, then at some point only to 25%, now up to 17%. “Charge completion time” is always 1 minute.
Now I doubled the hibernate threshold to 8%. Will that help keep down the memory effects on the new battery that will show in a few days?
Also, I am confused by the duplication between ThinkVantage Power Manager v1.52 and Microsoft’s XP-SP2 “Power Options Properties”. Can you go into when you’d want to use Lenovo’s and when Microsoft’s?
May 13th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
your blog isn’t helpful; in fact misleading
check out this link…
http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/b.....ead.id=351
July 21st, 2009 at 5:48 am
I have T60 (2623-D6U) and the battery indicator is off al the time.
I tried reseting the indicator and still it is off.
I checked with another battery and still the indicator is off.
I checked my battery on another T60 and the indicator worked fine.
I guess the problem is not with the battery.
Any Ideas?
September 28th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
I just bought a T400s, but I found that when I unplug the battery and use the DC power only, the battery indicator light sometimes still blinks. May I know is there any problem in my laptop? Thanks a lot.
November 8th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
I have an IBM ThinkPad r 60E I lost the Battery MaxiMiser Gauge located to the left on the tool bar near the clock. How do I get it back? I don’t have the Barttery MaxiMiser Wizard. How do I get all this back?