A Fix for MAC OS X Lion reduces Battery Life | Howard's Blog

9/23/11 9:23 AM

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A Fix for MAC OS X Lion reduces Battery Life

Posted on 26/07/2011 | 15 Comments

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I tried to find out if there is a fix to the shorten battery life after the Max OS X Lion upgrade. Finally, I found a fix. At this stage I am not sure if this is a real fix because I havent waited long enough to see how long my Mac Book Pro can last after a full charged. I can confirm that this is a real fix after I tested it for a few hours without the power
supply connected to my mac book pro. I could get 6 -7 hours under normal use (before apply the fix, I could only get

3 hours use). If you are having a shorten battery life issue after you upgraded your MBP to Lion. I highly recommend you try the follow step. According to the Apple Support forum, these keys are to reset the power management module in the MBP. The method was posted on Apple Support Forum as follow: **** Thanks Justins comment below, please ensure you have the power supply connected when you do this**** 1. Turn off the computer. 2. Hold down Ctrl+Option+shift 3. While holding down these button, press and hold the power button as well. 4. Hold all buttons for at least ten seconds. 5. power back on the computer. After I have done this, at 98% battery level the battery life timing was showing 9:15. It seems longer than beforer I upgrade. Anyways, this reading at least make me feel more comfortable. I will let it run and see how the battery consumption is like after applying this fix. *****Update : Please follow Dilins blog for a better fix. http://www.shaasthra.com/2011/08/revealed-mac-os-xlion-battery-drain.html

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This entry was posted in Mac Stuff and tagged fix battery life lion, Fix Lion Battery, Fix Lion short battery life, fix mac os lion battery, Mac Lion short battery life, OS X Lion, short battery. Bookmark the permalink.
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A Fix for MAC OS X Lion reduces Battery Life | Howard's Blog

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Justin | 27/07/2011 at 7:52 AM | Reply

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15 RESPONSES TO A FIX FOR MAC OS X LION REDUCES BATTERY LIFE

Hey thanks for the tip. If youre going to do this, make sure you have the MagSafe power adapter CONNECTED. If you run this fix without it connected, the computer will run with the fan at top speed, lose all information on battery performance, and stop charging. Thankfully, if you do run the fix without the MagSafe and your computer goes haywire, shut it down, plug in the magsafe, and run the fix again.

Dilin | 29/07/2011 at 1:04 AM | Reply

Ive listed some additional steps to be taken to ensure better battery life in Lion. You could check those out here: http://www.shaasthra.com/2011/07/how-to-revive-battery-life-after-os-x.html Seems problems like these are bringing us users together =) Dilin Anand

Rafael Gimense Leite | 29/07/2011 at 10:38 PM | Reply

Hi, at the 4 step Hold all buttons for at least ten seconds. Did you mean that is necessary press the 3 keys of keyboard + power button at the same time ? OR press the 3 keys, and power up the macbook pro ? thanks

Dilin | 30/07/2011 at 11:03 PM | Reply

presss 3 keys + power button

Ben Uliana | 31/07/2011 at 2:07 AM | Reply

Why does this work?

Howard | 31/07/2011 at 2:03 PM | Reply

I just worked for me, so I dont know how it works.
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Dilin | 01/08/2011 at 4:26 PM | Reply

@Ben Lion battery usage is different from that of SL, but the microcontroller does not realize this change so its calculations are still based on the old SL monitored data. Thus the system shows erroneous battery life. Ive listed and explained all the steps required for a SMC reset + batt. calibration procedure at my blog. Perhaps you might want to check it out.

Andy | 02/08/2011 at 4:22 PM | Reply

Resetting the MBP like this worked for me.

Kasper D. C. | 05/08/2011 at 4:03 AM | Reply

Hi All.. Just had a chat with Apple support. Here in Denmark they had not heard of this problem. However he was about to get me to reset the CMS, witch I of cause did before I called them, but it didnt help. Symptoms was 3-4 hours battery and a constant CPU temp at 80 deg. Hes guess was 3rd party software running in the background, not supported by Lion and therfore using a lot of resources. I found a Processes view in my iStat nano and guess what.. Something (witch I cant remember the name of anymore) was running at 100%. After a trip to google I found that it was my Citrix Gateway Client that was running. After a uninstall my CPU is now at 40 deg. and battery time is back to normal. (12 hours it says.. will probably get down to the usual 8-9 hours pretty quick) So check with iStat nano if something is eating your resources

Dilin | 05/08/2011 at 6:05 AM | Reply

Guys I have just made a breakthrough with the Lion battery problem. Howard you should check this out. The problem all along had been with the Apple auto graphics switching.

Tom A | 14/08/2011 at 4:09 PM | Reply

Thanks for the great tips Howard and Dilin! Using both the fix posted above and the http://www.shaasthra.com/2011/08/revealed-mac-os-x-lion-battery-drain.html has really improved my battery greatly. I use integrated only when I am doing normal stuff like coding/surfing the web getting roughly 9.5-10 hours on the battery versus the 2-3 before the fixes. Then I switch to dynamic when I need it for graphic intensive stuff.

Robert Anderson | 19/08/2011 at 10:04 PM | Reply

I went through this process and it made absolutely no difference in battery life. The problem is not power management, it is load on the battery from something that has changed in the OS.

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I installed Lion on two Mac Books, one Pro and one blackbook 13.3 machine. The battery life was reduced from 5+ hours to 1.5 hrs on the Pro and from 3 hours to 1 hour on the Blackbook. Both laptops run very hot now also.

Anonymous | 28/08/2011 at 7:02 PM | Reply

Was on Snow Leopard on Macbook Pro 13 2010. Recently upgraded to Lion, my battery life also deteriorated greatly. Just did a SMC reset followed by a NVRAM reset. Fixed things for me! SMC reset: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964 PRAM/NVRAM reset: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379

Jess Lornzo | 07/09/2011 at 7:02 PM | Reply

Thanks for posting this howard. I have upgraded to 10.7.1 thru a clean install of 10.7 then update. Ive reset the SMC and the Pram/nvram. Initially, there was a big improvement when the battery indicator showed that my MBP would last 7hrs. But after a while, and a few weeks use, my light to average battery life is at 4 to 5 hours with average use. (surfing via wifi, 25% brightness) I am still search for answers and hope 10.7.2 answers this problem. In the meantime, I really hope apple acknowledges this problem.

Sergani | 19/09/2011 at 3:03 AM | Reply

Does this work on SL as well? I have a 2011 13 MBP @ 500GB & 2.7 GHz, and my battery is doing 2 hours only.

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