Love this laptop, but battery life is definitely lacking, especially compared to other modern and non-modular laptops. In my opinion, an optional thicker chassis and bigger battery should 100% be prioritized over things like Ryzen mainboards. I’d much rather use a Ryzen CPU, but I’d much rather get 8+ hours of battery life instead of my usual 3-4.
If thickness isn’t an issue for some (it isn’t for me, I used to use 1-inch thick Thinkpads back in the day), then one could expand upon that and consider the option of a ruggedized Framework, that perhaps uses cylindrical lithium ion cells like you see in electric cars. I wonder if Framework is missing out on a lucrative market. Police departments and military spend $thousands for each rugged laptop, often from Panasonic or whoever. A ruggedized Framework could have space for much larger batteries and dare I say, a mechanical keyboard. Maybe someone who owns a 3D printer could make a prototype?
This laptop is is perfect size… Its been 20 years I have laptops. Now formfactors are pretty all set…
Wait for next node next year and you ll get your 8 hours. Or wait for a 15" woth more room
I’m personally very happy with the battery life. I’m a part time teacher and my laptop easily lasts for the ~4.5 hours I’m teaching, usually with ~20% of the battery left at the end of the day. I’m not doing a ton on my laptop while I’m teaching, usually just referencing worksheets, but my laptop is open with the screen on basically the whole time.
I would not have bought the Framework if it was any thicker. I wanted a laptop that was relatively small and portable, so size and weight were big considerations for me.
Similar to what Abe_Linkn suggested, I wonder if Framework might be able to offer two different chassis and battery sizes at some point in the future when the company is a little bigger. It would be pretty cool if there was a model where the chassis was maybe twice, with more slots for ports (possibly stacked two on top of each other), and a much bigger battery. I could see that being a good option for someone who is looking to use the Framework for more technically intensive pursuits.
In the meantime, a laptop power bank might be a good workaround.
Just saw this thread. It’s an old thread…but I think it’s a conversation we can have again, specifically because we now have Core Ultra Series 1 H processors that can be tuned to north of 100W.
Can we have a thicker chassis with the following changes / benefits:
- 99.9Wh battery.
- Thicker heatsink and pipes.
- Higher sustainable TDP (BIOS).
- Better speakers (in the bass department).
- Optional 4 DIMMS. (This definitely requires a mainboard THICC edition) Nevermind, specs says CUS1 only takes a maximum of 96GB of RAM. Might still be applicable to future processors from AMD and Intel though (e.g. 7840U already supports up to 256GB of RAM)
I feel that the FL13 footprint is great, and that the mainboard & processor can offer more if the chassis wasn’t so thin. With Apple haven’t gone back to thicker chassis for a few years now, there’s no reason to restrict ourselves to only thin 13.5 inch laptops.
(Continue to offer FL13 and FL16…but also an FL13+)
Screw dimms, straight to lpcamm.
Thicc enough to have 99wh battery and a slightly bigger heatsink would indeed be quite neat. Also break out some of the unised pcie lanes while you are at it, should have enough space to put an mcio or occulink connector somewhere.
Having lived quite happily with 2-3kg laptops and power supplies in the past, I’m quite happy to have an extra 300-400 grams of chassis and battery to lug around if it improves robustness and user time.
The reason I gave my Framework to my GF was the fact it didnt feel tough enough to lug around all doay. I know some of you do but i think many have just been lucky. Mine sits on the floor, on tables and ledges a lot while I’m working and it just felt like dead man walking the whole time.
I now use a 8th gen old Dell that I got for £150 on Ebay. I feel much happier now.
Wish I’d done that in the first place. 
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Good point, forgotten about that. Whatever the industry decides on as the future; LPCAMM / LPCAMM2.
With the H processors capable of higher wattage, it really doesn’t make sense to limit them to sub-35W sustained TDP if we really want to keep them out of landfills for the longest possible time. There’s a need to align the hardware capability and design with Framework’s mission. (That is, IMO, the higher the performance restriction, the shorter the usable lifespan, and sooner to e-waste.)
You can do that with the U just fine, it’s all settings. Though above 35W it is a bit diminishing returns. The current cooler with liquid metal can do about 45W sustained and a lot higher peaks if you can bully stapm into letting you. Going over 75W does seem to let temps rise faster than the throttling can kick in though so keep that in mind. I set mine to 45W long term power limit with a 95W temp limit and it does spike to 80W but short enough to not crash.
More reason to have a thicker chassis then…as the Intel Core Ultra will be a second processor series in the FL13 lineup that could use better cooling (with AMD 7000 series U processor being the first…a missed opportunity?).
Not sure calling it a missed opportunity even if I personally would have liked it. Pushing more power into it has quite diminishing returns (I did some testing on that) and the general public does actually seem to care how thick and heavy their laptops are. So framework choosing a relatively common size and weight bracket was probably a good idea, going with a thicker chassis optimized for weirdos like me could easily have been used as a gotcha against repairability/modularity. On the other hand my argument about framework going for mass appeal falls kind of flat when you consider it’s still lacking a touch option, which seems to be something the general consumer is quite into.
But hey a man can dream, make the thing like like 6mm thicker, up the battery to ~99 wh, size up the cooler a bit, maybe give it a bit more/bigger heat-pipes or hell a vapor chamber and ship it with ptm preinstalled. With the thicker chassis we can also do stuff like put in a second full sized m.2 slot and break out the rest of the pcie lanes as an 8x occulink or mcio or something port. The first 2 things would not even need a change in the mainboard and would likely only add a couple hundred grams.
Poor/strict choice of words from my abusive childhood I guess. Missed opportunity as in could do better, but didn’t walk that path. e.g. Could have scored 100 in a maths test, but only got 98.
Yeah, the initial chassis thickness / thinness was to make a statement. Now that’s been made, think we can spread the focus on “same footprint, but with more oomph”.
On your and my math test maybe but also probably lost a few points in the average consumers one XD
Hell could even be an upgrade kit but to be fair they seem to have more products than they can support as it is. Would be neat though.