Hello, I’m getting the Framework 13 Ryzen edition, but I’m getting the lower tier with the smaller capacity battery. I’ll stick with it for a while, but I value battery life a fair bit, so I do hope to upgrade at some point. However, I don’t want the other one to become ewaste. Obviously there’s the option of making a portable charger out of it, but would it be viable to just leave it (alongside a screwdriver) in my backpack as an emergency backup battery, should my main one run out while I’m on the go? Would the battery realistically drain much at all if it’s not even plugged into the laptop? Could I leave it in there for a month or two or a few without worrying about whether it’ll still be charged? Sorry if this is a silly question, I’m just not sure much about this sort of thing.
Energy will always drain out of a battery even when not plugged into anything but rates can differ. On my Anker battery bank, it’ll be dead within a month even if nothing is plugged into it so I always have to charge it up every 2 weeks. It’s good practice to plug it in occasionally to make sure it’s topped up.
Oh, I would not leave a bare Lipo pack in a bag unprotected! It absolutely needs to be in a hard case to protect from damage.
Lithium batteries, if damaged or charged improperly, can “vent with flame”, aka literally shoot out a stream of fire. It vents flammable gases, which becomes the stream of fire. Worse, you can not put the fire out with water, and the smoke is toxic.
Kinda sad Framework hasn’t put out that battery case concept they showed in the Next Level event.
I was writing this same response as you posted! This is meant to be an internal component for a reason, and having it loos in a backpack means a big risk of damage that could lead to lots of bad stuff
Lol, I saw you writing, and I knew you must have been about to warn him too!
A soft, vulnerable lipo pack just riding along in a backpack with a pointy screwdriver next to it. A 55Wh pack. Gave me anxiety just reading it.
Good to know! Thanks for the help, unfortunate but I suppose I’ll just wait until they make that battery case a reality.
Though, additional question here, would it be relatively safe if I were to 3d print a hard case for it to keep it safe when not in use?
Theoretically, lithium-ion batteries that are not charged or discharged must be fully charged once every few months.
Provided you designed the case to be especially strong. Accidents happen, I would want it strong enough to not bend if stepped on. One might think that getting stepped on is unlikely, but large lithium batteries can be so terrible when they go off that I would just not risk a lesser case.
Made me think about my li-ion 18650 emergency supply that I haven’t touched in ages. Just checked them, my Sonys dropped 0.02v.
As long as you store your batteries with a medium or higher charge level, they can be fine for a long time. But not sure if the Framework pack’s BMS might have parasitic drain. Someone should leave one out for a while, then test how much charge it lost. The concern is that you don’t want your cell’s voltage to get too low. It can ruin them, cause them to be unsafe to charge back up. But if that happened with a laptop battery like the Framwork’s, which has a built-in battery management system, it should protect you by blocking you from charging.