DR202 Chicony Replacement Battery 10.8V 6600mAh Li-ion

Chicony Dell Inspiron 1500 — 10.8V Li-ion Replacement Battery (DR202)

This is a 10.8V, 6600mAh (71.28Wh) Li-ion battery for the Dell Inspiron 1500 notebook. It replaces part numbers DR202, EMC36, ME202BB, NL2020, and SMP02. Install it when the original cell no longer holds a charge or the laptop only runs on AC power.

• Dell Inspiron 1500 compatibility: The Inspiron 1500 uses a specific three-cell bay with a 10.8V nominal rail and a proprietary SMBus connector. This cell matches that voltage, connector pinout, and BMS handshake — the BIOS recognises it without a workaround.
• Bench tested on actual hardware: We ran this cell through a full charge and discharge cycle on an Inspiron 1500 chassis. The BMS reported state-of-charge correctly and did not trigger an unrecognised-battery warning during the session.
• First-cycle calibration on Dell hardware: After fitting this cell, run the laptop on battery until it hibernates at low voltage cutoff, then charge it uninterrupted to 100%. This single full-discharge cycle resets the BIOS battery learn cycle and clears the inaccurate health warning that appears after every cell swap.

BIOS reporting battery health as poor after installing a new cell

The Inspiron 1500 BIOS reads health data from EEPROM embedded in the battery circuit. When a new cell goes in, the EEPROM data does not match the aged-cell profile the BIOS has stored, so it flags the battery as degraded even though the cell is fresh. This is not a fault with the replacement cell. One full discharge-to-hibernate followed by an uninterrupted charge to 100% runs the learn cycle and updates the stored profile. After that cycle, the BIOS health status typically returns to normal.

Laptop shuts down at 20–30% charge shown on screen

This happens when the fuel gauge IC has not yet calibrated against the new cell's actual voltage curve. The IC is still using the old cell's discharge profile, so it misreads remaining capacity and calls a shutdown well before the cell is empty. The fix is two to three full discharge-and-charge cycles — not partial top-ups. After calibration cycles, the reported percentage and actual cutoff voltage align, and the laptop runs down to the correct low-battery threshold before shutting off.