电量数字只是猜出来的

那个电量数字只是猜出来的。转发给那个一到百分之十就开始慌的朋友。你的手机在屏幕角落显示一个电量百分比,干干净净,看起来很精确。它像是一个明摆着的事实。

That battery number is a guess. Tag the friend who panics at ten percent. Your phone shows a battery percentage, a clean, exact-looking number sitting right there in the corner of the screen. It feels like a plain fact.

它并不是直接量出来的。没有哪种简单的办法可以打开电池,直接读出里面还剩多少电。手机做的,是去测电压和流过电池的电流,再把这些数字交给一个小程序,让它根据同类电池通常的表现,把剩下的部分估算出来。

It is not a direct measurement. There is no simple way to open up a battery and read how much power is left inside it. Instead, the phone checks the voltage and the flow of electricity moving through the battery, then runs those numbers through a small program that estimates the rest, based on how similar batteries usually behave.

所以这个数字有时候会跳得很奇怪:天冷时掉得飞快,或者卡在百分之一上比你以为的久得多。电池本身没有坏。手机只是在尽可能认真地猜,而且每隔几秒就更新一次它的猜测。

That is why the number can jump around strangely, dropping fast in cold weather or staying stuck at one percent for far longer than expected. The battery itself is not broken. The phone is only guessing, as carefully as it possibly can, and updating its guess every few seconds.