I keep trying to convince Alex that it is not worth paying too much attention to his battery meter. Maybe this article will help? Oh well, I guess not…
If laptops had as much battery life as phones, I bet we’d see “bar inflation” happening to their battery gauges, too. Manufacturers can’t really get away with this scam when total run time is only a few hours, though – and modern laptops all have “smart” batteries that let the operating system quite accurately estimate how long the battery will last at the present drain level. So this is, at least, one piece of nonsense that laptop users have not yet had to suffer.
Mostly the article points out how your cell phone is lying to you. Sigh.