The following linux commands will help you to obtain the information about your laptop battery such as manufacturer, part type, capacity, voltage etc. First, tool which can be used for this job is dmidecode command. If you currently do not have dmidecode available on your Linux system you can install it by:
UBUNTU/DEBIAN # apt-get install dmidecode CENTOS/FEDORA # yum install dmidecode
next, using dmidecode we can obtain some hardware information about our battery:
# dmidecode -t 22
# dmidecode 2.12
SMBIOS 2.6 present.
Handle 0x002E, DMI type 22, 26 bytes
Portable Battery
Location: Rear
Manufacturer: LGC
Name: 42T4942
Design Capacity: 93240 mWh
Design Voltage: 11100 mV
SBDS Version: 03.01
Maximum Error: Unknown
SBDS Serial Number: 073C
SBDS Manufacture Date: 2012-03-23
SBDS Chemistry: LION
OEM-specific Information: 0x00000000
Another and perhaps more useful alternative method to obtain a laptop battery information including its status is by using upower command:
# upower -i `upower -e | grep 'BAT'`
native-path: /sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0A08:00/device:09/PNP0C09:00/PNP0C0A:00/power_supply/BAT0
vendor: LGC
model: 42T4942
serial: 1852
power supply: yes
updated: Thu Jul 16 14:23:05 2015 (5 seconds ago)
has history: yes
has statistics: yes
battery
present: yes
rechargeable: yes
state: charging
energy: 81.53 Wh
energy-empty: 0 Wh
energy-full: 81.53 Wh
energy-full-design: 93.24 Wh
energy-rate: 7.22 W
voltage: 12.848 V
percentage: 100%
capacity: 87.441%
technology: lithium-ion
History (rate):
1437020485 7.477 unknown
1437020540 7.286 charging
From the above output we can see that the battery is currently charging, it was designed to hold up to 93.24 Wh of power and currently can hold only up to 81.53 Wh which gives it 87.441% of its original capacity left. The above upower command output can also be used to monitor any detail about the battery status. For example using the command below we will monitor its charging status:
# upower --monitor-detail `upower -e | grep 'BAT'` | grep state
state: fully-charged
state: discharging