August 2021 batch 3 battery all puffed up already

Framework Laptop 13
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I keep my laptop on a stand on a desk so I don’t often handle it or even look at the sides. I just noticed that the top cover is bursting at the seams.

2 years 9 months? Not unheard of for a lipo to go bad in 1000 days I guess, but it’s sure disappointing when I have a bunch of way older Sony, LG, Lenovo, & Apple machines with similar flat pouch lipo batteries that never puffed up and they are a lot older than this.

I have had one HP and a Samsung android table do it, though they both took longer than 2 3/4 years.

I’ve already ordered the replacement battery and I still like my Framework and I don’t want anything other than I wish the quality was a little better across the board.

For instance My screen has always been unevenly colored and a bit on the pink side. Like looking at a white screen, the white is all noticeably pink compared to two other monitors on the desk, or any other laptop just held up next to it, and there is a vertical band of blue/purple haze about 3/4 to the right, almost like when you bring a magnet near a crt. There was a thread way back about the screen calibration and I’ve tried to use color profiles to compensate, but the blueish splotch is not something that can be compensated with a color profile. I don’t do any sort of graphics design or professional photography so I just live with the frankly garbage screen because coding and cad and pcb design etc doesn’t really matter, plus I mostly look at 2 other monitors.

For instance the bios and usbc issues that have really never been resolved for the entire life of whole motherboards. I am on a 12th gen now but started on a 11th gen, and the 11th gen lived it’s entire life with bios issues that just never got resolved. I got lucky there and did not seem to have the problems other people had. My ports all seemed to work and I didn’t have the 0.39ghz throttling problem etc. I did have fun with a bios update one time that did something wrong with the way it handles rebooting and went into a boot loop that I had to figure out my own fix by manually editing the contents of the EFI partition.

Other things that I can’t prove but I just never had the problem before, like, my external monitors ROUTINELY disconnect and reconnect and I have to use arandr to reconfigure the desktop. I have tried several different thunderbolt 3 and 4 cables of different power and speed ratings, 3 different tb3/tb4 docking stations, and on the same os (though, older) going back years, I never had that problem on Sony or Lenovo machines.

Whatever, actually I’m a mostly happy owner but it’s just not all roses that’s all. I don’t actually recommend FW to most people who ask for help figuring out what to get. Some I tell to get a LG Gram, some I tell to get a Thinkpad, or a Macbook, but you’d have to be another “me” who is willing to tolerate all kinds of qol hits in trade for more diy-ability, like running linux and trying to only use open source apps for everything. Well, I guess a FW laptop is like that. It’s more “good for you” than “good”. If I were FW, I would not really like that to be the tldr for “What is Framework?”

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I don’t know where I stand on getting another one if I needed to.

I have already invested a lot in this platform. To start, I didn’t go cheap from the outset, max cpu ram and hd in the first place, all the modules (4 usbc, 2 dp, 2hdmi, 2 usba, 1 1TB, 1 microusb, 1 ethernet) , new keyboard after I spilled a coffee on my original, upgraded from top 11th gen to top 12th gen motherboard. And now the new 61wh battery, and added the coolermaster case to the battery order to stick my 11th gen board in (and then probably do nothing with it).

But if I get fed up with the screen, even though I like that they came out with a matte screen, I’m not 100% sure if i’ll buy a new screen from the same company that sold me such a junky one in the first place. Similar for the AMD motherboard. It means new ram and wifi along with it. Do I keep giving this company my money?

I probably will. I just wish I could pay with money that only 95% works.

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You should reach out to Support for both the battery and the screen. If you have a splotchy part of the screen then it sounds like it is defective. Neither of my 11th gen machines has that issue. Personally, I find the screens to be above average, but that’s just, like, my opinion, man.

Best of luck, and have a great day!

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Fair point. Not knowing who to contact, in my case I would reach out to Support and have them help to point me in the right direction. Presumably it would be someone in Engineering, but the company is pretty small so there’s likely a decent amount of overlap.

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Why would I contact support? What question do I have for them? What do I expect them to do? I know how to address the situation so I don’t need help in that regard. It’s long out of warranty so I’m not expecting to get a new battery for free. The damage is done. They sold and shipped a battery that puffed up in under 3 years. That is simply a past and finished fact now. All I’m doing is reporting that this has happened. I could contact them to just inform them for their own data, but why should they alone get that info instead of everyone? And they have that same info now. (And if they don’t scan these posts, who’s fault is that?)

Same with the screen. It functions, it’s just low quality. The blue area also developed gradually over time. I’m not sure if it was there from the beginning but very faint, or just not there initially. I am not remotely interested in whatever hoops they would make me jump through to prove that the screen still looks like crap even when running Windows, and have no way to prove that I didn’t do it somehow by sunlight or heat or something and not interested in the effort to try to prove unprovables like that. The damage is done. They sourced and sold a crap screen. That’s a finished fact of history.

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We do not respond to most topics, but we read almost all of them—at least, I do.

When you report something to support, it helps us track the issue and determine if there is a widespread problem, allowing us to understand the impact. For out-of-warranty products, of course, we can’t force anyone to contact support just for reporting.

The support team should not make anyone “jump through hoops” for troubleshooting. Sometimes it might seem like they are asking the same (or very similar) things repeatedly, but it’s only to ensure that you are not missing an important step. As a support professional with years of experience (both technical and non-technical), I can confirm that most problems can be resolved with very basic troubleshooting and actions. The more knowledgeable you are, the more you tend to skip over basic things, which is why it’s harder to troubleshoot issues with tech-savvy folks.

That being said, if you have a negative experience with support, please share that as well so I can pass along the feedback.

Anyway, thank you for sharing your experience and feedback.

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This aggression will not stand, man. Hopefully the replacement battery lasts longer than the original one. Have a good day.

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Less than half of a year buying a Framework Laptop I’m already skeptical about the battery. According to the manual, both the operating temperature and the battery charging temperature are 5°C to 35°C, but the battery only charges at one fifth of the rated speed at or below 20°C(the middle between 5 and 35), indicating a problem with the battery management system(BMS). I posted in the forum and it was moved from “Framework Laptop 13” to “Community Support” as if it’s not an official problem and it’s up to the community to find a solution.

In this thread many users report battery degradation faster than 80% capacity remaining (i.e. 20% degradation) after 1000 cycles specified. I just set the charging limit of my 61Wh battery to 75% as my previous 5y/o laptop has a 46Wh battery without limit charge % function and the health is 89% after 400 cycles.

I guess there’s always a risk of using a niche product. Since the user base is very small, problems go under the radar more frequently, compared to popular computer models.

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Sorry about my wording, edited my reply(80% capacity i.e. 20% degradation) to reduce confusion

It’s written on the user manual.

It’s possible that the battery chosen works better at higher temperatures, i.e. 10°C to 40°C, to compensate the heat(+5°C) from the components of the laptop, in this case charging at 20°C with computer off is a bit low.

Sorry, but I was wondering that is it true that the battery quality has been declining over the years?

My previous job involves working with lithium ion batteries and my colleagues and I found that use external force(clamped with aluminum plates, putting counterweight on top, etc) to physically prevent an aging lithium polymer battery from swelling actually reduces degradation. Testing shows lowered internal resistance and higher capacity compared to an aging battery left swelling. This could also explain why cylindrical cells are more durable and safer than pouch cells. In conclusion, performance degradation and dangerous potentials are not entirely separate for a swelling battery

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The storage temperature is between -25C to 45C and the operating temperature is between 5C to 35C

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Just discovered the ML1220 coin cell of the same age is also dead, as in no longer taking a charge. wth man… These things are sold with solder tabs and expected to last over 10 years not under 3. But I upgraded to the 12th gen as soon as it was orderable, so maybe sitting dead for a year killed it. At least it’s not soldered so it’s easy to replace.

… ha!, check all the comments on the only suitable result on Amazon… :slight_smile:
https://www.amazon.com/ML1220-Lithium-Rechargeable-Batteries-Cloth/dp/B088KT9HB9

So it’s normal for these to die in 2 years. Well I think it’s not normal, but is apparently normal for the Framework 11th gen.

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Can you try charging it with a bench power supply?(with resistors to reduce current to single digit mA)

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The cell becomes damaged if it’s allowed to drop too low. Combine that with the fact that Framework will send a new one for free & there isn’t any point in messing around with it, just replace.

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Since this is now in a coolermaster case, I’m installing a much larger ML2020 with solder legs. There should be room to install at least 2 of them actually to provide about 90mah. Same voltage, same battery chemistry, and there is a spot right next to the holder that should hold 2 of these stacked, and dead simple wiring right over to the solder legs on the holder, without even buggering up the holder. Could still install a normal cell, although I think I won’t mix different size cells connected at the same time, either just the normal cell, or one or more of the bigger cells.

I already ordered the ones from amazon before finding out that FW would supposedly send a free replacement so no sense even asking now. I don’t need this type for anything but this one 11th gen board. And now I’m probably not even going to use those since I’m using one or two 2020’s instead now.

There is room for even more, like at least 4, but the board gets a little warm a little further to the right, (20mm further away from the holder), and I don’t want to put cells right over that spot. But even just a single 2020 takes the capacity from 17mah up to 45 mah, so that’s already plenty. And the way the case is so tall, I think there’s room to put 2 2020’s on top of each other, so now 90mah.

There are a few different chemistries that are all rechargeable coin cells with lithium, and even the same nominal output voltage, but they all take different charge voltage, so it’s critical to only use ML series not VL series which look the same, or anything else.

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Whether the cell being damaged or not and whether the mainboard failed to recognize a discharged coin cell are not the same thing.

The point is to figure out which one is the possible cause of the cell “not taking a charge”
Sorry for nitpicking, if that annoys you or other users I’ll shut up…
I think that messing with old worn down devices is a legitimate hobby.

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The board is putting 3.17v into the cell.

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That’s probably a damaged cell, wait for replacement

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BTW You haven’t said anything that makes me want to say shut up. I think it’s equally valid to say this isn’t worth wasting time on, or to say it’s as perfectly interesting and valid to spend time on as any other interest.

You never figure out anything if you don’t just poke at something for a while some times. Every minute can’t be either sleeping or directly productive billable hours or taking a selfie at one of the wonders of the world.

I don’t even have a use for this stupid thing. By the numbers it made no sense to buy the coolermaster case (or even print one).

I upgraded the motherboard and didn’t have to replace anything else at the time. That’s good. But now so far I have spent:
$40 coolermaster case
$80 1T TN470 nvme
$40 2 x 8G ddr4-3200
$25 intel AX200 wifi-6/bt-5 card WITH 2 antennas (and 2 desktop/server pcie brackets)
$6 2 x ML2020
Plus tax & shipping
…on the left-over motherboard, and no real use for it.

And that’s not counting

  • $20 the ML1220’s from amazon which got obsoleted by the ML2020’s
  • 45 minute drive each way drive out to MicroCenter (hd, ram, and wifi were all right off the shelf there. But I have a convertible and the weather was nice and I like audiobooks, so eh :slight_smile:
  • $120 chargeasap 100W power supply
  • $10 100w usbc power cable
  • $250 ASUS MB16AC screen (back in 2018 when I got it)
  • $100 HP LifeStyle 1000 wireless keyboard
  • $75 Microsoft Arc Mouse
  • $9 usba module for the keyboard receiver (everything else is rawdogged right into the motherboard ports)

I already had these for a long time, but, I still only have them because I bought them, just, previously, and now they are occupied for this instead of for something else)

It’s ultimately just a much less gainly laptop, or much less useful desktop. I already have fully working whole laptops which are better for most situations where I could use a 2nd computer for some reason like if I need to use Windows or FreeBSD and not in a vm and don’t want to boot my main machine into it. Most likely is maybe I’ll mount it on the back of a tv at one of my work benches to use for looking up documentation or running eprom or fpga programming software etc.

The most sensible thing to do was probably to just try to get $50 for it on ebay or something.

But not the most interesting.

As far as I’m concerned, pick this battery issue all the way apart.

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sorry I was replying MJ1.

Totally agree

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I don’t think you want to be doing that as you will double the voltage. This means they probably will not charge as the battery voltage is higher than the charge voltage, and also the RTC/CMOS backup chip will be receiving too much voltage and probably fry.