Re: choosing a travel zoom
1
"So you seem to think that a flashing low battery icon when later there is 2 out of 3 bars shown available is ok"
The behavior you are seeing has to do with with charge migration inside the battery and where a voltage is being sensed in the camera. The sensing point is far removed from battery capacity is. After the camera is turned off and the current stops flowing, there is some time for the charges to "catch up" so to speak to where they are being sensed. So you go from having a low battery icon to having an indicator show two out of three bars. It is characteristic of Lithium-Ion batteries that the fall off in voltage as they discharge is pretty small. So if you a camera relies on just voltage sensing to know the charge remaining, you get a somewhat imprecise reading. The indication is not just charge remaining, it is influenced by recent load history.
This is normal behavior for the relatively low cost type of battery used in the SX series. The manufacturer will see this as "functioning as designed" Maybe not the ideal way, but this is as good as it is going to get given the level of technology built into the battery itself.
There are more sophisticated battery management technologies, for instance those built into Sony batteries used in cameras like my HX50 and HX300.
I can appreciate you thinking that maybe someone that actually has an SX280 could give you better information. But the situation is that it is not the camera, it is the level of technology built into the battery that limits what can be done.
If having a better charge remaining indication is important to you, you really should be looking at a different brand of camera instead of Canon.