Battery charge anomaly with EC on boot-up

[carryonrewardless]

I am interested to know if others have experienced anything like the following. I submitted the prompt below to Gemini and the response is in the text file attached.

If I shut down my MSI 16R4 laptop running Debian 13 XFCE and the MSI-EC module (developed by this github community - big thanks) and unplug it from the AC adaptor with at least 70% battery charge, next morning when I start it up the AC adaptor must be plugged in otherwise the battery level will be reported as only 1% charge. What is happening?

BattChgAnomaly.txt

[glpnk]

Maybe you have dead battery, using suspend instead of shutdown, or other?

Paste output of

cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT1/uevent

[carryonrewardless]

Thanks for your reply.
I don't think the battery is dead but it is not brand new either. The info below is what I have several minutes after booting with the above described experience but the critical line of energy-full: returned 40.2 Wh only 2 days ago after an longer re-charge period. (Note that the voltage is quite healthy - but not the full story ). So my belief is the battery has about 80% of new battery capacity.
I think what I am getting from Gemini sounds quite feasible.

native-path: BAT1
vendor: MSI Corp.
model: MS-16R4
power supply: yes
updated: Wed 22 Jul 2026 13:11:46 (28 seconds ago)
has history: yes
has statistics: yes
battery
present: yes
rechargeable: yes
state: pending-charge
warning-level: none
energy: 10.2942 Wh
energy-empty: 0 Wh
energy-full: 12.8592 Wh
energy-full-design: 51.3 Wh
energy-rate: 0 W
voltage: 12.632 V
charge-cycles: N/A
percentage: 80%
capacity: 25.0667%
technology: lithium-ion
charge-start-threshold: 75%
charge-end-threshold: 80%
charge-threshold-supported: yes
icon-name: 'battery-full-charging-symbolic'

[glpnk]

get off gemini, just send raw readings. Seems that your battery is toasted

[carryonrewardless]

You did read my previous comment that the energy-full: returned 40.2 Wh only 2 days ago?
I am not relying in any way on Gemini or other AI. I will replace the battery when all of the ducks line up to say so.
I am hoping to see some analysis of the behaviour of the EC that Gemini reports to confirm or otherwise that it is valid information rather than just dismiss it without examination.

[glpnk]

i don't believe you, not gemini, give me raw dump or call service

[glpnk]

i need to compare readings with my own ones

[carryonrewardless]

What raw dump?

[glpnk]

cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT1/uevent

[carryonrewardless]

I inadvertently posted the output of upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT1
and didn't realise you were dismissing that.

Here is the raw output you request. Note that two queries have been run. One during the same session after booting up and seeing a 1% battery charge, the second after allowing it to reach 100% and then rebooting to give a very different POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL figure.
Note that 3933000 is 87.4% of 4500000. Suggesting pretty strongly that my battery is not dead or needing replacement.

At 14:47. battery report
cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT*/uevent
DEVTYPE=power_supply
POWER_SUPPLY_NAME=BAT1
POWER_SUPPLY_TYPE=Battery
POWER_SUPPLY_STATUS=Full
POWER_SUPPLY_PRESENT=1
POWER_SUPPLY_TECHNOLOGY=Li-ion
POWER_SUPPLY_CYCLE_COUNT=0
POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_MIN_DESIGN=11400000
POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_NOW=12934000
POWER_SUPPLY_CURRENT_NOW=0
POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL_DESIGN=4500000
POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL=1128000 ***********************
POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_NOW=1128000
POWER_SUPPLY_CAPACITY=100
POWER_SUPPLY_CAPACITY_LEVEL=Full
POWER_SUPPLY_MODEL_NAME=MS-16R4
POWER_SUPPLY_MANUFACTURER=MSI Corp.
POWER_SUPPLY_SERIAL_NUMBER=

After reaching 100% reported charge and re-booted at 14:50

cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT*/uevent
DEVTYPE=power_supply
POWER_SUPPLY_NAME=BAT1
POWER_SUPPLY_TYPE=Battery
POWER_SUPPLY_STATUS=Full
POWER_SUPPLY_PRESENT=1
POWER_SUPPLY_TECHNOLOGY=Li-ion
POWER_SUPPLY_CYCLE_COUNT=0
POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_MIN_DESIGN=11400000
POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_NOW=12905000
POWER_SUPPLY_CURRENT_NOW=0
POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL_DESIGN=4500000
POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL=3933000 ************************
POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_NOW=3933000
POWER_SUPPLY_CAPACITY=100
POWER_SUPPLY_CAPACITY_LEVEL=Full
POWER_SUPPLY_MODEL_NAME=MS-16R4
POWER_SUPPLY_MANUFACTURER=MSI Corp.
POWER_SUPPLY_SERIAL_NUMBER=

[carryonrewardless]

Mate, I am grateful for the effort you have put into everything you are doing here.
I am well aware of Gemini's ability to hallucinate. I also have an awareness after two weeks of probing this behaviour that the data stored by the bios EC element is not being reported correctly to the operating system until the battery has reached 100% charge and the system is rebooted. This appears to correlate with the information that Gemini has collated from it's various sources and it's explanation of what's happening.

[glpnk]

Okay, battery seems to be okay, but for some reason it resets. Do you sure that laptop fully powers off? Do you have any usb devices plugged? Looks like you burning battery and recharge

[carryonrewardless]

I was doubtful that the shutdown was complete for a while as that seemed an obvious explanation but am now satisfied that I understand what is going on. No usb devices involved.
It is apparent that one set of circumstances around the AC adapter being plugged in at boot is totally different to when it's not plugged in at boot.

Given this, do we see any merit in these two commands as part of a solution?:
echo "msi-ec" | sudo tee -a /etc/modules
sudo update-initramfs -u -k all

[glpnk]

Solution for what? If you want to enable auto load - not sure why you using /etc/modules file, because for systemd auto load you need /etc/modules-load.d/msi-ec.conf

Module will not help you with your problem

[carryonrewardless]

I will be interested to see if others read this and report any similar observations. I don't believe it is "my" problem alone.

"Looks like you burning battery"
No, because if I plug in the AC adapter before booting the battery condition is reported correctly. Please re-visit what I have said on this.