Ending weeks of speculation that Windows 7 was prematurely indicating battery failure, Microsoft has announced today that it has extensively discussed the issue with ecosystem partners and come to the conclusion that Windows 7’s battery meter is working as intended.
“Using all the tools at our disposal including contacting customers reporting this issue on forums, customer service communications, partnerships with our PC makers, and of course the telemetry in Windows 7, we have been monitoring reports and discussions regarding this new feature, trying to separate reports of the designed behavior from those that might indicate an issue with Windows 7,” said President Windows and Windows Live Division Steven Sinofsky.
“In the latter cases we are trying to understand the scope of applicability and obtain hardware on which to reproduce a faulty behavior. To date all such steps indicate that we do have customers seeing reports of battery health issues and in all cases we have investigated Windows 7 has simply accurately detected a failing battery.”
The issue being reported, Microsoft says, stems from a feature new to Windows 7, which can accurately detect and report that a battery has degraded to 40% or less of its original capacity. This new error state explains why users have been observing warnings on batteries which are reported to be in working condition on Windows Vista and XP.
“In Windows 7 we set a threshold of 60% degradation (that is the battery is performing at 40% of its designed capacity) and in reading this Windows 7 reports the status to you. At this point, for example, a battery that originally delivered 5 hours of charge now delivers, on average, approximately 2 hours of charge,” Sinofsky said. “The Windows 7 the notification is a battery meter icon and notification with a message ‘Consider replacing your battery’. This notification is new to Windows 7 and not available in Windows Vista or Windows XP.”
Sinofsky concluded by saying that all the data they have collected indicates that the warnings correspond with nothing more than normal battery degradation. While users have been responding urgently to the sudden warning, Sinofsky said that the concern “does not change the reality of the condition of the battery.”
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