Update: the power led has been flashing white and orange.
So I did some more reading around and found that this is an issue that many people have faced on other laptops too. A recurring suggestion was to unplug the power and let the battery run down completely. So I did that and the laptop eventually blanked out.
I then plugged the power cable back in and the power led glowed orange this time. I let it charge a while (laptop powered off) and went to play Boom Beach on my phone (what else can one do in such a situation, right?) and after about 15 minutes powered the laptop on again. The battery showed as charging and had 19%. The acpi sys file is now reporting the charging status,
more /sys/bus/acpi/drivers/battery/PNP0C0A\:00/power_supply/BAT/uevent
POWER_SUPPLY_NAME=BAT
POWER_SUPPLY_STATUS=Charging
POWER_SUPPLY_PRESENT=1
POWER_SUPPLY_TECHNOLOGY=Li-ion
POWER_SUPPLY_CYCLE_COUNT=0
POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_MIN_DESIGN=11100000
POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_NOW=11460000
POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL_DESIGN=4400000
POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_FULL=4589000
POWER_SUPPLY_CHARGE_NOW=945000
POWER_SUPPLY_CAPACITY=20
POWER_SUPPLY_CAPACITY_LEVEL=Normal
POWER_SUPPLY_MODEL_NAME=S10
POWER_SUPPLY_MANUFACTURER=TPS
POWER_SUPPLY_SERIAL_NUMBER=
so that’s good.
The estimated time to full charge is also showing up in the Gnome Shell. So i guess all is well.