BatteryMon Battery Information - where does the data come from

[Toshiba S5100]

hello passmark support!

i have some questions i hope you have an answer to. i know you are not the producer of any batteries and the software just provides information from the battery or estimates, but maybe you can help me anyway.

my question is especially about the point "Design capacity". do you know who determines that particular information? is it coming from the manufacturer of the battery or the laptop?

i am asking because i just bought a brand new (i can't even tell if it is new, since there is a "N/A" in the date of manufacture and no manufacturer, but i purchased it from a big dealer) battery for my toshiba satellite 5100. it's a replace and not original. the original one i still have gives me around 70 minutes when the laptop is under full power. same does the brand new one.

but the major difference between the old battery and the new one (except the new one costs me 100 bucks) is the capacity written on it. the old one has 3600mAh, the new one 4400mAh. what suprised me, other than the crappy 70min i got of the new and "stronger" one is the capacity stated by batterymon: only 3534mAh design capacity and 3399mAh(!) full charge capacity. that's worse then the old battery.

so can i say that i was ripped of with that "4400mAh" battery??

[David (PassMark)]

Most (in not all) of this information comes from the charging circuit in the laptop. The charging circuit in turn 'talks' to the 'smart' battery pack to collect details from it about what type of battery it is and how it likes to be charged. This allows for a mixture of batteries (different chemistries and/or charge states) to be used in a device.


This communication is done via the SMBus.

This slightly old Smart battery specification is a good starting point for learning what goes on inside your PC.

As for who to blame when it all goes wrong. It is a tricky question without a detailed analysis of the data on the SMBus. I think it would be fair to say that the battery doesn't seem to be fully compatible with the charging circuit. If it was my PC, I would return the new battery and buy a new one from the original manufacturer. Then you know who to blame, as the same company supplied the battery and the charging circuit.

[Toshiba S5100]

thanks for the information. i did send the battery back already.
i hope that it just was a defect and they can send me a "real"
4400mAh battery back. otherwise i will have to ask them to pay
me my money back. unfortunetely toshiba has never made such
strong batteries for my laptop. the biggest one had 4000mAh and
is at least twice as expensive than the mine.

[mashimaro221]

battery is on the smbus of the EC/KBC, how to access it?

As far as I know, battery is on the smbus of the EC/KBC, not the smbus of south bridge, and EC program is different among manufacturers. I wanna know how to access the battery status through EC, or is there any common interface in Windows?

Most (in not all) of this information comes from the charging circuit in the laptop. The charging circuit in turn 'talks' to the 'smart' battery pack to collect details from it about what type of battery it is and how it likes to be charged. This allows for a mixture of batteries (different chemistries and/or charge states) to be used in a device.


This communication is done via the SMBus.

This slightly old Smart battery specification is a good starting point for learning what goes on inside your PC.

As for who to blame when it all goes wrong. It is a tricky question without a detailed analysis of the data on the SMBus. I think it would be fair to say that the battery doesn't seem to be fully compatible with the charging circuit. If it was my PC, I would return the new battery and buy a new one from the original manufacturer. Then you know who to blame, as the same company supplied the battery and the charging circuit.