OMFG, Dell, why can't you be normal and make your batteries die like any other batteries - by simply switching the laptop off immediately when the charger is unplugged???

Guess what it looks like when a JD25G (XPS13 9530) battery is dying (still 88% health)!

Constant screen flickering (yes, even in BIOS). Good thing I'm not an epileptic - my screen is fucking strobing!!!

I know it's a battery, because I had the same issue some years ago when I replaced the died original one with a cheapo made by GreenCell. Boi that was fun - I saw my laptop do miraculous things I never would've thought of! Screen flickering was one of them. As soon as I replaced that turd with an original one all these magic powers went away.

So you'd rather have the computer completely dead than working but strobing?

Reminds me of my Galaxy Note 4.
When the original battery died, it would loose charge way quicker than normal.
However, if you removed it from the phone for a few minutes and inserted it back in after, you were back at 50% charge, but cellular connection wouldn't work, until you recharge it.

@electrineer yes! It would still be running on a charger, so not entirely dead!

Strobing is SOOO bad, it blinks and dumps parts of the frames in all the wrong places 6-12 times per second

@electrineer https://m.youtube.com/watch/...

enjoy :)

I can't imagine coding like this. I'd love the batt simply switch the lappy off, so I could run it on life support - the charger

Wow, it's not only the backlight. What on earth...

If you get a seizure from the flashing before you're able to look away and close the lid, then I agree that a sudden shutdown would be better. Otherwise, I think it's still useful that the laptop stays on for example if there's a transient fault in the electrical grid.

Some devices die when on low battery others have a heart attack

Wow, that actually is the only occasion where i see a bug description and genuinely think:
That isn't a bug, that actually is a feature.
And if they did it intentionally: Kudos to whatever engineer pulled that off.

You might not be able to actually work on a flickering screen. But if it keeps the device alive until you managed to save your work and shut it down correctly or plugin the charger, that actually is a waaaaaay better solution to insufficient power than just turning off without warning.

@Oktokolo how about they just shut down the screen and but keep all the other components on

@Oktokolo no it's not.

Everything has an autosave these days.

Btw that flickering only happens after you manage bringing the video back up. Initially after resuming the screen was darker than a black cat's asshole in the middle of the night. Blind typing xrandr commands and randomly changing resolutions got me the video feed back...flickering worse than radioactive grasshopper's pubes on a christmas night...

But yeah, most folks would most likely just hart-reset it anyway, effectively losing all the unsaved work. I see no 'feature' on this bug.

Even if the screen wasn't out and I could save things, I can't do anything on my lappy until I get a new battery. That means until next year. I'd happily lose my unsaved work once rather than be stalled for a fucking month!!!

@netikras so the screen doesn't come back on if you plug in the power lead? That's just shitty then. It sounds more likely that the battery itself is fine but some circuit somewhere is fucked.

@netikras
Sorry, my answer was based on incomplete information.
That you had to blindly use xrandr to get the screen back on is a pretty unexpected plot twist changing the feature into a bug.

@electrineer nope, it doesn't :) It keeps on flickering, no matter what I do (incl the power plug). Sometimes the flickering calms down... Like ATM it seems gone completely until I switch to a workspace with multiple watch commands and a htop running in tmux. Then it happens again.

However, if my screen shuts off (after 15min on a battery), I can't bring it back on until I make changes to resolution blindly typing xrandr commands (xrandr -s 1920x1080; xrandr -s 2560x1440).

@electrineer I had the exact same problems after using GreenCell battery replacement for 2 months: strobing, black screen, blind typing, etc. Everything was exactly the same. It all got "fixed" by replacing that GreenCell replacement with a genuine Dell battery. Just like that. So I'm assuming it's the same problem. And I'm hoping it is!

I've kept all my old batteries (exc the GreenCell one - returned it to get a refund). Yesterday I tried plugging them in to see if either of them alleviates the flickering. Unfortunately, neither of them made it go away :/ I'm getting worried it might indeed be circuitry this time. And if it is, I doubt I'll find anyone to fix it for a reasonable price (since it's a thin ultrabook...) :/

Still hoping my old batteries decayed over time to the level they've started to cause the same flickering problems. :fingers-crossed:

Try plugging the laptop to the power without the battery.
If screen still flickers its not the battery.
If it's the battery, buy new one and cut that one open. Free battery cells...
That's what I've been doing to get cells, since it costs more to buy the cells lol