That’s good. It is a clearer indicator than flashing.
I have a question about 3.07 firmware.
While the laptop is on, it appears that the 50% charge capacity I set in the BIOS is honored. However, when I shutdown my computer or put it into hibernation, if the device is plugged into the wall, it charges to 100%.
Is this expected behavior or a bug?
Anecdotally, my charge limit is set to 80%, system off, the light will be solid orange while charging, then start flashing when it stops.
Turning the system on, it shows 80%.
That’s actually the opposite of my camera battery chargers that flash while charging, and go solid when finished.
to all posters and readers,
I have written this with extreme care.
I might be the only poster here without some formal tech education.
I and very-probably others like me would appreciate any comments on any of the following:
I plan to use the pc on-premises 99.9% of the time; it would travel exceedingly-rarely.
I plan to leave the pc On always, because i recall that a number of years ago i decided that hibernation and Sleep were too unreliable, and the energy waste of being continually On would be small. (Every night i turn down the screen lights and keyboard lights.)
I plan to set the charge-limit at 50%, to extend battery life, based on this thread of posts, which i have medium-skimmed.
I previously wondered if i should buy a spare battery with the pc, just in case Framework goes out of business. But i decided No, for each following reason:
- the statement in this thread of postings, ‘If the battery is removed to protect it [or, i guess, bought without an enveloping pc or other charge-maintaining device], you would still have to store it at 60-75% charge anyway.’
- the probable ability to buy a battery from some other seller someday
Thank you in advance for any comments.
Hi @Doug_H a few thoughts
There is no good answer to this.
Batteries only last a few years so you will always need a new one in time.
It is a compromise between battery wear and component wear really - if you leave it on and plugged in all the time then the components will all be fired up - which decreases their lifespan - some things like the fan will spin up occasionally as the OS does its housekeeping and so on and the processor will be constantly warm. In short you are better off buying a new battery every few years than a laptop (unless you need the fastest machine possible, and that will come with a new battery anyway).
tldr
If you have to wear something out - better the battery than the rest of the hardware IMHO. Hope this is helpful
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I plan to leave the pc On always, because i recall that a number of years ago i decided that hibernation and Sleep were too unreliable, and the energy waste of being continually On would be small. (Every night i turn down the screen lights and keyboard lights.)
Software gets improved over time. Years is a very long time in software.
Although there have been reports of minor problems with Suspend states on the framework, those have primarily been for excess power draw which is clearly less of a concern to you.
Linux suspend still has some issues apparently, but Windows 10/11 suspend shouldn’t cause you any functional problems.
Just from a purely environmental perspective suspending or better yet hibernating will save a notable amount of power over a year. And across an entire neighborhood not-suspending would add significant power draw which could go to other uses.
Thank you Anubis. Based on what you wrote, i will again do a test-use of daily hibernation, when i get a new pc working.
Thank you Random User, for the creative idea: you’re saying that i could keep the battery in the pc, but disconnect it.
To Random User or anyone:
Am i correct in inferring that thus keeping the battery in the pc but disconnected would keep the battery in good condition for years longer than otherwise?
(Yes, i could easily take the risk of loss of recent-unbackedup-data due to the tiny risk of power failure at the premises.)
I am not a battery chemistry expert, but I think this:
A disconnected (stored) battery at 50% charge will have a long life.
A connected battery with a 50% threshold charging system setting is hardly being used because when the battery drops a little, the charger kicks in and is essentially providing the current to run the circuitry at the same time it’s charging the battery. So the battery level fluctuates very little and looses almost no charge to run the computer. This is about the same scenario as an unconnected battery in storage.
With other systems (like Lenovo), two thresholds can be set: the upper and lower, so the fluctuation in charge and battery drain can be set by the user. I don’t what Framework uses for the lower threshold for a given setting. That determines what the fluctuation would be.
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Just want to be sure: does the scenario you described amount to setting both the upper and lower limit around 50 (with the upper slightly higher than the lower, like 51 and 49)?
The thresholds are user controllable, but I’ve never set them that close and can’t confirm that the Lenovo system allows it. I’ll try it and report back. But that’s the general idea, set them close and the battery never charges or discharges much.
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@John_Lombardo great idea, hopefully something that works and we can get the framework people to build into the bios
@James_C It looks like Framework has the lower threshold already set very close to the charge limit (upper) threshold. When using the computer, the battery charge level does not vary, which means as soon as it drops slightly below the threshold set in the bios, charge is added to the battery to keep it at the correct level.
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That’s what I noticed, too. Using ectool fwchargelimit 60 at full battery state, it will start discharing the battery (ignores the connected wall plug) until it reaches 60% and keep it there as near as possible. But I found out that you can use ectool chargecontrol idle afterwards to avoid this discharging and just keep the battery at full state. I’m not sure why we need this step, but with this all used energy will be sourced from your wall plug and the battery will be ignored as far as I can say.
You can check the battery/charging state using ectool battery, “Present current” should be “0 mAh”.
Maybe DHowett got an idea what’s happing behind the scenes? It’s quite hard to get some information about the supported (and undocumented?) commands sometimes 
Interesting - I noticed another thing - I have mine set to 50% generally and when travelling I set it to 90% as I’m not always near a socket - it was down to about 60% and I reset the threshold to 50% but plugging in it made it charge to 100% - so if (on Windows at least) if it is already above the threshold, the threshold is ignored. Pretty niche situation but I thought I would mention it.
One thing to keep in mind is that, the warmer the battery, the quicker it will discharge on its own even when not being used and/or disconnected. Therefore, if you leave it disconnected but in your laptop for a long time, it could very well be at 0% charge the next time you re-connect the battery (and leaving a battery at 0% is probably the second worst thing to do outside of leaving it constantly charging at 100%). Colder and drier environments are better for battery storage but must be above freezing (and beware of using a fridge if you don’t live in a dry environment as the dew point of the ambient air is usually higher than the temperature in the fridge and therefore every time you open the fridge door the outside air entering the fridge pretty much immediately condenses).
Also it’s my impression that doing lots of little charges (e.g. 45% to 55%) can result in the battery’s charge level becoming inaccurate over time, thereby requiring the user to manually re-calibrate every once in a while simply by draining the battery to 0% and then fully charging it to 100% before using the battery like normal - otherwise you may end up with funny situations like the battery claiming a charge level of 0% while the laptop is powered on yet unplugged, and remaining at 0% for something like 30 minutes until the battery finally runs out (this did indeed happen to me once on an older laptop).
Thanks to “NM64”. I had noticed that no one had responded to that Jan 29 question of mine, not even implicitly and roughly.
Thanks also for your additional comments, beyond my question. Those comments seem very helpful.
I didnt clearly read it out here 
What is the lower charging limit? I see the upper limit can be set in BIOS, but will it always charge when it drops 1% below the limit?
With my Thinkpad, I set a range of 10-20% between upper and lower limits, so with normal battery discharge it doesnt get topped up frequently.
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Yes my prior Lenovo laptop had a feature where you set a minimum % before starting to charge. In other words, don’t charge until the battery drops to X%, like 50%. For those of us who unplug and plug in multiple times a day, its not good to always charge up to say 80%. When it drops to 79% it will charge again to reach 80%. So a top charge limit does not prevent multiple charges over and over again. I would like to set a minimum and maximum charge level.
this actually doesn’t work on 12th gen, not sure if I am doing something wrong but the chargecontrol doesn’t work at all, maybe 3.0.6 on 12th gen doesn’t support this yet