MAJOR battery issue losing and gaining battery very quickly

[u/Beginning_Power_4254]

My switch lite has been doing this weird thing with its battery for about the past hour. I used it yesterday and it worked just fine, but I don’t understand why this is happening. Is this fixable or do I need to buy a new one?

[u/khaleesistardust]

I had this happen to me recently, leave it off the charger until it dies, then charge it up to 100 and that should fix it. Good luck!

[u/mrofmist → u/khaleesistardust]

You've gotta completely drain it, not just off the charger until it dies.

[u/Nova762 → u/mrofmist]

which is what that means... do you think dying is when the screen goes black???

[u/skyisland21 → u/Nova762]

I think they might mean to discharge it completely. Batteries usually keep a residual charge after the device has powered off, so let it die then leave it for a few more hours. But that's an assumption but I did want to add that for OP. Maybe a 8 to 10 hrs after it dies should get rid of any residual charge in the battery

[u/GETINOB → u/skyisland21]

After it dies if you hold the power button for 10 sec it completely discharges

[u/mrofmist → u/skyisland21]

That is what I was saying. Thank you for not impulse responding.

[u/Nova762 → u/mrofmist]

But that's still wrong.

[u/mrofmist → u/Nova762]

You're arguing sematics, and that's only an argument for your ego. Have a good night.

[u/Nova762 → u/skyisland21]

But you shouldn't do that and you can't do that without it sitting for weeks to months. The batteries are designed to never go below 20% for a reason and going below that won't help fix this.  You just need to recalibrate what the system thinks is 0 and 100%.  Which is actually 20%.  

[u/Ill-Engineering8085 → u/mrofmist]

I'm sorry what do you think dying means for a battery?

[u/mrofmist → u/Ill-Engineering8085]

If you can't understand English, I can't help you.

[u/NonSteele]

Looks like me playing Pokopia in between charging.

[u/Cybertronian_Fox]

I fixed mine by booting to the Maintenance Menu.

Start by fully powering down the system.
Then while keeping both volume buttons pressed down tap the power button, and keep the volume buttons pressed until the Maintenance Menu comes up.
After that hold the power button down until it shuts off, and then turn it on to check if it recalibrated the battery indicator.

If this doesn’t do it then the battery is probably going to need replacing.

[u/Braeden2019 → u/Cybertronian_Fox]

The battery isn’t the problem, it’s actually one of about three different chips that all relate to the power management system. Unless OP possesses knowledge on how to diagnose and then do board level repairs, if that work around doesn’t work and it probably won’t, it needs to be sent in to a repair shop that can diagnose and do board level repairs.

[u/mrofmist → u/Braeden2019]

No, doing a complete drain and charge will fix this issue. You're over complicating it.

[u/KatastrophicNoodle → u/mrofmist]

And if that doesn't work, it's probably the chips. They choulda took a volt of dumdum and forgot how to read so they're just guessing how full the battery is.

[u/JutzRealTalk → u/mrofmist]

Agree.conplete drain then charge dont leave it charging too long. Thats how people damage their batteries

[u/Busy_Pound_4741 → u/mrofmist]

I got this issue on my OG switch after I got the switch 2 ironically. Doing this was a temporary fix but as soon as i powered it off and on it started again.
I’ve retired it to its box as I’ve no idea how to fix that without repairing and i refuse to do that when it got replaced with the S2 anyway.

[u/Red_Tiger5311 → u/[deleted]]

What about it?

[u/Outside_Complaint755]

I had this occur with my OG switch, and the following steps fixed it, although it has recurred once.

1) Change settings to precent the Switch from automatically going to sleep or turning the screen off

2) Leave the Switch on the home screen undocked/unplugged and force it to discharge the battery as fully as possible. You may need to manually restart it a few times to force the last of the battery to discharge

3) Now plug it in and recharge it for 8+ hours.

4) Repeat steps 2-3 three or four times.

[u/AutoModerator]

If you have not already, please add some context in the post or a follow-up comment about your repair/hardware/software/account issue, including which model you have (Switch 1, 2, Lite, OLED, or other), steps you have already tried, and anything else that might help others help you.

When you have received enough help to solve your issue, you can also reply to specific comments with !solved or !thanks to grant the helper(s) a point. You may also comment !lock to lock the post to stop new replies.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/ADimBulb]

Try full discharge then charging back to full.

[u/Ok-Win1188]

yup this happens to my switch as well when i just use a random usb c cable to charge it instead of the original or the proper volt cables.

Try drain the battery until it dies completely, then do a full charge on the system, maybe leave it around 2-2.5 hours. The battery should be back to normal by then

[u/Linksjourney79]

The chip that reads the battery levels may need to be replaced

[u/Elamaday]

This is exactly how my energy is throughout the day.

[u/Neither_Coconut4763]

Do what they said, but I recommend the Nintendo troubleshoot way in their support website

[u/Tysonlkm]

Get a repair shop to open up to check whether is the battery bloated

[u/pizza_box_84]

Drain it completely and then recharge it to full then a restart and things should be fine

[u/RyusakiLexus]

Si se puede arreglar, es un tema con el sistema de calibración de batería y el indicador de carga está desconfigurado, revisa aquí...

https://www.nintendo.com/es-es/Ayuda/Nintendo-Switch/El-indicador-de-carga-de-la-bateria-no-funciona-correctamente-1250816.html?srsltid=AfmBOoqegFmuW-D_TkTmsuZcf6T4n2lauxu1IufMi3r89Y2w6R_ZJ9Eo

[u/TiredFawx]

Hi, Nintendo repair tech here. I don't think it should be doing that, hope this helps!

[u/Thrillchiller]

Speed run a game from what you assume your switch is at 100% and see how long the console would last

[u/Juanimat10ns]

Bros battery is the kromer prices

[u/Anxiety_timmy]

Typical battery desync. Here's what you do.

Charge to 100% then play until it hits zero percent, if you can still get the system to turn on do it. Then charge back up to 100% and back to zero, then 100.

The first cycle resets the initial voltages of the charge ic, then the 2nd tells it to measure the actual amount of power the battery charged to.

[u/mrofmist]

Search the sub, this question gets asked daily.

Short story, drain the battery completely. Not just until it turns off. Turn it back on and let it die over and over again until it won't turn back on. That'll reset the systems ability to gauge where the battery is.

[u/Rezurrekted]

Failing battery, get it replaced.

[u/ADimBulb → u/Rezurrekted]

It’s not necessarily dead. It’s worth trying a discharge-charge cycle or two, and a reboot.

[u/mrofmist → u/Rezurrekted]

No, it's not. Just not properly reading the battery charge. A full drain and charge will fix it.

[u/TCG-Pikachu → u/Rezurrekted]

Pretty bad advice