Service Battery appears instead of the time Remaining on MacBook Uni/Late 09

[aurora72]

Recently a relative of mine handed me her MacBook Unibody Late 2009 (A1342) by noting that it no longer worked. When I got it it didn't even power up and it had a hefty bump at the middle of the keyboard and the touchpad. The battery had been badly swollen. I told her that it could be fixed by replacing the battery but she was not interested in using or even seeing this laptop. Apparently she had discarded it for a time. She said that I could do anything with it, sell it for parts or fix it, that she didn't care. So I decided to buy a new aftermarket or a used original A1331 battery and use it. Recently I've bought a used original Apple battery for about $35. The seller tested it on his A1342 MacBook running Windows 10 and sent a video showing it. It was performing quite good on Windows 10, displaying at least 4 hours Remaining. After I've connected it on my MacBook running 10.14.6 Mojave I've noticed that when I connect the power chord, it wasn't being charged. The orange LED at the tip of the chord was lighting for a couple of seconds then it was turning off. The battery was apparently not being charged. I've checked the cycle count of the battery. It's 704. After a search on Google I saw a suggestion at Quora, which said : Deplete the battery completely and leave it off for 24 hours and then plug in the charger. I've tried that and it worked. The battery was being charged and it was charged %100. After that full charge I've been using the laptop for hours. I haven't really counted how many but many hours and the decrease in percentage was steady, i.e. it decreased one by one, it didn't jump to lower values. So, basically it's operating fine and I'm quite pleased with it. The only problem is, it doesn't show the time Remaining, it shows instead the Service Battery remark:

Is there a way to get rid of this and make it display the "Remaining" ?
Here is the Power info:

 

[K two]

Recently a relative of mine handed me her MacBook Unibody Late 2009 (A1342) by noting that it no longer worked. When I got it it didn't even power up and it had a hefty bump at the middle of the keyboard and the touchpad. The battery had been badly swollen. I told her that it could be fixed by replacing the battery but she was not interested in using or even seeing this laptop. Apparently she had discarded it for a time. She said that I could do anything with it, sell it for parts or fix it, that she didn't care. So I decided to buy a new aftermarket or a used original A1331 battery and use it. Recently I've bought a used original Apple battery for about $35. The seller tested it on his A1342 MacBook running Windows 10 and sent a video showing it. It was performing quite good on Windows 10, displaying at least 4 hours Remaining. After I've connected it on my MacBook running 10.14.6 Mojave I've noticed that when I connect the power chord, it wasn't being charged. The orange LED at the tip of the chord was lighting for a couple of seconds then it was turning off. The battery was apparently not being charged. I've checked the cycle count of the battery. It's 704. After a search on Google I saw a suggestion at Quora, which said : Deplete the battery completely and leave it off for 24 hours and then plug in the charger. I've tried that and it worked. The battery was being charged and it was charged %100. After that full charge I've been using the laptop for hours. I haven't really counted how many but many hours and the decrease in percentage was steady, i.e. it decreased one by one, it didn't jump to lower values. So, basically it's operating fine and I'm quite pleased with it. The only problem is, it doesn't show the time Remaining, it shows instead the Service Battery remark:
View attachment 1935862
Is there a way to get rid of this and make it display the "Remaining" ?
Here is the Power info:
View attachment 1935863

Reset SMC. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

 

[aurora72]

@K two Thank you for the comment. I forgot to mention that I've tried that SMC reset already but it didn't make that Service Battery remark go away. I've tried it now once more for good measure and that remark is still there. Btw when it's being charged it does show the time Until Full. Here it is (I've used the battery up to %5 and then plugged the power chord)

 

[K two]

@K two Thank you for the comment. I forgot to mention that I've tried that SMC reset already but it didn't make that Service Battery remark go away. I've tried it now once more for good measure and that remark is still there. Btw when it's being charged it does show the time Until Full. Here it is (I've used the battery up to %5 and then plugged the power chord)
View attachment 1935878

Have you seen this? https://www.alphr.com/service-battery-mac-replace/ Covers a lot of useful battery info. Recalibration, especially. ?

 

[aurora72]

@K two Thank you for the comment. Yep, I have seen that link. re-calibrating the battery is the way to go. I did the re-calibration but I did it in a hurry. Now on the link it says:

1. Fully charge your MacBook to 100%.
   
   
2. Keep the laptop running while connected to the power supply for a couple of hours.
3. Unplug the MacBook from the power supply and let the battery drain completely.
4. Leave your MacBook overnight without the power cord connected.
5. The next morning, plug your Macbook in and charge it to 100% power again.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After I've taken a closer look at it, I've found that I didn't do it exactly, for instance I didn't start draining the battery after the MacBook was fully charged. It was about %60 charged. I didn't keep the laptop running for a couple of hours while connected to the PS, either. Those might have prevented a re-calibration of the battery. I have to apply it once more I guess.

 

[aurora72]

I've applied the re-calibration procedure again. It didn't change the situtation
Then I've changed the HDD with my earlier SSD on which Mountain Lion was installed to check if the time Remaining would come up and fortunately it came up:

The Service Battery remark keeps appearing though. Just can't see why it appears. I'll keep on searching to fix it.

 

[EugW]

Well, it's an old used battery with 754 cycles. It's not that surprising to see it give you that message.

That said, I still have the original OEM batteries in my 2008 MacBook and 2009 MacBook Pro, and after downgrading from (patched) Catalina to (patched) High Sierra, the 'Service Battery' message disappeared... which is interesting, because I had previously seen the message in High Sierra too.

 

[Amethyst1]

Seems like this message isn’t all that reliable an indicator then.

 

[EugW]

Seems like this message isn’t all that reliable an indicator then.

I think one can say that if you see the message, your battery likely isn't in good shape, even if the message goes away.

On the flip side, if you don't see the message, that does not necessarily mean the battery is in good shape.

The OP's original description is concerning though. Perhaps this was a bit of a scammy sale. Why was the battery condition only shown by the seller in Windows, for a Mac?

 

[aurora72]

Well, it's an old used battery with 754 cycles. It's not that surprising to see it give you that message.

That said, I still have the original OEM batteries in my 2008 MacBook and 2009 MacBook Pro, and after downgrading from (patched) Catalina to (patched) High Sierra, the 'Service Battery' message disappeared... which is interesting, because I had previously seen the message in High Sierra too.

Yep it's 700+ cycles but it's still good in every conceivable way. Last night I drained it up to %2 and it still didn't abruptly power off and I was able to shut down the laptop properly. It recharges and drains steadily.

After I plugged in the Mountain Lion SSD and charged it to %100, it said 6:52 Remaining. I can't call a battery as old if it can power a laptop for 7 hours.

Btw I also have a Powerbook G4 Titanium and its 19 y.o. battery shows at least 5 hours Remaining after being 100% charged on Leopard. If it had the chance of running Mojave, it would surely bring up that Service Battery remark.

 

[aurora72]

Seems like this message isn’t all that reliable an indicator then.

I think the same. Ultimately, that message is thrown over there according to some criteria and that criteria is not guaranteed to evaluate the battery condition correctly.

I think one can say that if you see the message, your battery likely isn't in good shape, even if the message goes away.

On the flip side, if you don't see the message, that does not necessarily mean the battery is in good shape.

The OP's original description is concerning though. Perhaps this was a bit of a scammy sale. Why was the battery condition only shown by the seller in Windows, for a Mac?

The message itself isn't much of a problem, really. The message taking over the time Remaining info is the problem and this happens in Mojave but not in Mountain Lion which makes it look like an organizational decision rather than a technical necessity.

Yep, the seller showed the battery condition solely on Windows 10 but I don't think he did it to conceal that Service Battery warning. I suspect he ever uses macOS at all because he seemed to be a typical Windows guy. In my country a great many people with Apple laptops use Windows. He is very likely to be one of them.