All battery powered devices behave like Apple laptops when left unpowered for a considerable period of time?

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All battery powered machines behave like that.

I'm a bit confused by your response (and to avoid derailing that thread), what other device have you encountered that exhibits this kind of behavior and what might exactly be the reason behind this weird behavior? Is this some ploy by manufacturers to get people to bring in their devices to their service centers so they get to charge their customers some obscene amount for fixes/repairs?
 

Nothingness

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I'm a bit confused by your response (and to avoid derailing that thread), what other device have you encountered that exhibits this kind of behavior and what might exactly be the reason behind this weird behavior? Is this some ploy by manufacturers to get people to bring in their devices to their service centers so they get to charge their customers some obscene amount for fixes/repairs?
A tablet from ASUS, an MP3 player from iRiver. I left these devices unused for months and they needed a very long charge to accept to start.
 
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A tablet from ASUS, an MP3 player from iRiver. I left these devices unused for months and they needed a very long charge to accept to start.
Weirdly, the Macbook is the first laptop that I have faced this issue with. Something about devices with non-removable batteries? x86 laptops usually work on AC power even if their battery is dead.
 

Nothingness

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Weirdly, the Macbook is the first laptop that I have faced this issue with. Something about devices with non-removable batteries? x86 laptops usually work on AC power even if their battery is dead.
I never leave my laptops unused (well except for the M1...), so it's hard to say.

Did you leave any of your latops unused for many months?
 
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Did you leave any of your latops unused for many months?
Yeah. I have at least half a dozen x86 laptops. The worst that happened to one of them (an ASUS with Core i7 4th gen H series CPU) was that the battery lost its ability to hold a charge. It was brand new and life was so busy at the time that I fully charged it upon opening it and promptly forgot about it until a year later. It did still turn on and has run fine ever since on AC power.
 

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Lifer
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Weirdly, the Macbook is the first laptop that I have faced this issue with. Something about devices with non-removable batteries? x86 laptops usually work on AC power even if their battery is dead.
I've never ever heard of "all battery powered" devices working that way.
I can tell you that old MacBooks with user-replaceable batteries would turn on without the battery installed, just like your PC laptops.

* However an iPhone that is completely drained won't turn on immediately. So I guess a crApple device does need a bit of stored current to boot up. It doesn't take 24 hours though; that doesn't make any sense.
 
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It doesn't take 24 hours though; that doesn't make any sense.
Let's see. I took the MBA with me to work and put it on charging. Will report in a few minutes if I can get it to turn on. Otherwise, I will take it home and put it on charge overnight. If no, I bring it to work tomorrow again and put it on charging and then do the same tomorrow night if it still doesn't turn on. However, if Sunday morning it's not working, I'll have to agree with you on the crApple part.

I don't even care about it that much but if it turns on, Amazon should pay me about $500 towards a better laptop so in that sense, I want it to work!
 

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Lifer
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Let's see. I took the MBA with me to work and put it on charging. Will report in a few minutes if I can get it to turn on. Otherwise, I will take it home and put it on charge overnight. If no, I bring it to work tomorrow again and put it on charging and then do the same tomorrow night if it still doesn't turn on. However, if Sunday morning it's not working, I'll have to agree with you on the crApple part.

I don't even care about it that much but if it turns on, Amazon should pay me about $500 towards a better laptop so in that sense, I want it to work!
MacBook Air M2? j/k
 
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MacBook Air M2? j/k
ACTUALLY, that was the plan in the beginning but now it's probably gonna be some Snapdragon Elite X laptop.

At least M$ is putting its weight behind them so they should be supported for quite a while and running legacy software shouldn't be too painful in theory.
 
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@Nothingness , THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

I used my original Moto Edge charger and after being plugged in for about 8 hours, it booted up with no issue!

In fact, after shutdown I was trying to clean some gunk from under the brightness key and pressed it down a bit and the laptop booted up again. It's like it's too excited now to stay powered off. Now to clean it up for its final resting place (some awful Amazon warehouse!).

After 8 eight hours, it was charged up to only 69% (I know!). Looks like the battery must be going through some crisis. Need to get rid of it ASAP!
 
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I don't know if it's standard behavior but now it's booting up automatically when I open the lid.

And the 69% battery increased to 72% :oops:
 
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@Doug S

Supposedly if a lithium battery is allowed to fully self discharge when it is eventually charged it is supposed to be charged extremely slowly back to full, or it will greatly compromise the battery's future life. Self discharge down to zero is about the worst thing you can do to them. Maybe the Mac has some way of figuring out if the battery ran down to flat due to usage or due to self-discharge, and has a very super slow charge algorithm for that case and won't let you try to power it on until that's complete?

Interesting theory. I would like to read more about it. Any links?
 

poke01

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My Pixel 6 did the same and my mums galaxy S6 did the same as well. They booted after a period of time when they were unused for months. It’s probably a thing with some ARM devices. I don’t recall x86 MacBooks doing this. Maybe Doug S is onto something
 
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Anyone know any Wine/x86 emulation voodoo with regards to MacOS? Tried to run Rapydmark. It crashed, probably coz it can't recognize where it's running. Any way to force software inside Wine to think it's running on a compatible CPU?
 

blankslate

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pretty good collection of articles as for the Apple specific information I cannot speak on it.

However, I have an older MSI laptop with a i6700h CPU and 960m GPU and I had to use is as a back up after it had been in storage for about a year under not ideally stable temperatures.

The laptop didn't start charging the battery until after being plugged in for a total of about 3 or 4 hours intermittently on AC power in different locations. At first I thought the battery was totally dead. but then it eventually started charging again and being several years into a lifecycle it didn't charge fully but didn't seem overly worn given the amount of time it was in storage.

Also common advice I have seen among enough articles on the care of lithium batteries is to discharge them to about 50% capacity if you are going to leave the device unused for some time and to not habitually charge them to 100% all the time unless you need the capacity for an all day session away from way to charge your device.

device specific software fairly common to limit the charge to about 20 to 40% less than 100% capacity since holding the battery at near 100% while the device is plugged in (for example charging a phone overnight or having a gaming laptop plugged in all the time since it's on the heavier side of portable plus performance considerations) does indeed reduce wear and tear battery lifespan.

In particular recent Samsung phones stop charging (supplying current to the battery at either 80% or 100% depening on the option chosen) when Battery Protection is turned on in setting or via a quick toggle in the notification pane.

And Asus laptops have software to limit the battery charge to 60% or 80%

if anyone has an Asus Laptop look into the G-helper software on github it is a lighter less cpu resource intensitve substitute for the MyAsus / Armory Crate software that controls various battery and performance features that ASUS adds to various laptop model series.

You might end up preferring it to the official manufacturer software. It is updated on a fairly frequent schedule so far still.



_________________



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Doug S

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In particular recent Samsung phones stop charging (supplying current to the battery at either 80% or 100% depening on the option chosen) when Battery Protection is turned on in setting or via a quick toggle in the notification pane.

iPhone has that as well, under Setting/Battery/Charging you can set the threshold where it will stop charging to 80/85/90/95/100. Previously when I'd get a new iPhone I would only charge it every other day, or sometimes every third day, to avoid topping it back to 100% every night after 18 months or so of use it would become more and more common that a day's use would drop it below 60% and I'd feel I have to charge it to insure I won't drop into the red the next day. With the 16 Pro Max I just got I set it to 80% and a day's usage drops it down around 50% and I recharge it back to 80% so I'm staying right in that ideal range.

Not like it makes a difference for me because I tend to upgrade every other year, but the future owner of it (and the planet) might end up benefiting from it if it takes a little longer before its original battery starts showing its age.

Good hear to you revived your M1 @igor_kavinski. Makes me wonder how many battery powered consumer electronic devices get tossed every year because it sat in a closet too long and people try charging for a half hour, find it doesn't work, and decide it is broken. If this isn't common knowledge on Anandtech, it surely isn't something the average consumer has any idea about!
 
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Things that impressed me:

Felt like I was using a fanless tablet.
Did not get hot.
Battery used percentage didn't like going down too quick.
I was using it lying down with the laptop in the air and holding with one hand and typing with the other. Didn't feel too much strain from the weight.
DMG containers were nice. Some like LibreOffice I think run directly without installation.
LibreCalc overclock.net Excel benchmark score was 7 seconds. The M1 is a number crunching monster.

Things that annoyed me:

Not as thin and light as people make it out to be. I want a version made out of plastic. I liked the HP Aero laptop based on Ryzen 5825U. It was lighter and thin too, if not thinner.
Launching software wasn't as instant as I thought it would be.
I started hating the bouncing icons because sometimes they just bounce and bounce and nothing appears on screen.
 

poke01

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Not as thin and light as people make it out to be. I want a version made out of plastic.
Yeah, there are lighter laptops the metal doesn’t help.
I started hating the bouncing icons because sometimes they just bounce and bounce and nothing appears on screen.

I disable that stupid setting lol
 
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Yesterday, upgraded from MacOS Ventura to Sequoia in about 55 minutes and the battery didn't lose even 1 percent.

That's...crazy.
 

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Lifer
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Sadly have to keep it coz the Amazon trade-in was limited time only :(

Now they are offering me less than $250 for it. :mad:

Base model, 8/256.
What was the trade-in value before? Any chance that promo will return for the "holidays?"

Alternately you can sell it to another sucker? :p
 
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What was the trade-in value before? Any chance that promo will return for the "holidays?"

Alternately you can sell it to another sucker? :p
Suckers don't buy from suckers like me :D

They were offering $500 before but I didn't know at the time how to revive my seemingly "dead" MBA since I misplaced its original charger.

It's not a total loss though, since the money for it came from the sale of two Geforces which were themselves bought with lottery money :)

But I could've been working with a Snapdragon Elite X 78 CPU right now with 32GB RAM in WINDOWS, instead of the illogical MacOS, had I traded in the MBA at the right time. It's truly grating on the nerves having to do things completely differently. Even Linux doesn't give me fits like MacOS does.