Hello again! I got some time on my hands to tweak with that battery, so I might as well make a follow-up. So it wasn't the Chinese battery, nor the power delivery system malfunctioning. It was simply... Linux. Let me get this straight. Every Linux acolyte on any Linux forum will tell you that this system is a Godsend for older hardware since it's more lightweight than Windows and "the battery life is comparable or even better"! To some extent this statement is true, but not in every case. Let me elaborate. Yes, you get rather good battery life when you're doing simple things and run programs that does not require high CPU usage. The good battery life myth starts to dwindle when compiling software and opening any modern web browser is added to the equation. The X220 I own has Intel Core i5-2520M, which is rather dated architecture. Simply searching the model name + power consumption, returns the information about peak power usage up to 30W. And in reality it really can draw that much, when you stress all the cores simultaneously. It wouldn't be a problem when you're using a charger, the battery says that it supports overcharge and deep discharge protection, right? WRONG! When it comes to the long term, high CPU usage, Linux doesn't support power management options that would (out of the box) prevent the CPU from draining so much power from the batteries, especially when it comes to the older hardware, where all the electricity goes through the battery non-stop. What I had to do is to use TLP, strictly specifying options I needed in the config file. I also changed my behaviour a little bit, to not strain CPU whilst using battery so much. If you want to have the best outlook on how the power is handled in real time it's better to use powerstat, rather than powertop. I'm quite delighted now with the battery life. It's always good to remember to not always trust the people on the Internet, it's harder when everybody tells you it's all sunshine and rainbows and only thing you need is install TLP and run it as a daemon, and that's it. Honestly, I wouldn't mind the Chinese battery, as the replacements are quite cheap, but it's the second time Linux "killed" my laptop's battery.
It's funny how I ended up installing the modified BIOS, since I had thought that the issue was with how the power management is handled by the hardware. My model had BIOS intact, the same that came out of the factory. I think it was version 1.26. The next problematic thing about the X220 is, you can install original BIOS from the .iso image, you don't have that option when it comes to the modified BIOS. Again, it wouldn't be a problem when you have a spare drive with Windows... but I didn't. I have to say with a firm confidence this webpage with community resources about the X220 is one of the greatest pages on the Internet. I simply followed the steps to install modified BIOS without the need for separate Windows drive - which is still tricky because you still need Windows to install program that would flash the modified BIOS in question, but hey it works.
I'm going to wrap this up for now. It's been a quite productive stage of my life and I can say I'm happy with how things are going so far. As I said previously in a blogpost, it's all about the attitude. Stay safe everybody!
[Go back]