Battery slowly drains when completely shut down

Framework Laptop
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#1

My Framework laptop (i5 CPU with 32GB G.Skill Ripjaws SO-DIMMs, Samsung 980 Pro NVMe 512GB drive, running the 3.07 bios, on Fedora 35) sits in it’s bag for weeks at a time, fully shut down (where I only use it occasionally when on-site with a client).

After sitting for a week in its bag, completely shutdown, the battery runs down by about 6%. What’s up with that? I’ve used many laptops throughout my career (running Linux, Windows, and MacOS) and none of them would drain the battery when completely shut down and left to sit.

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High Battery Drain During Suspend
14% battery drain after 12 days sitting unplugged and powered off
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#2

I have some Lenovo laptops that will still drain when shut down.
They also have an option to supply power to the USB ports, even when powered off.

There have been reports in the community that the USB-A and HDMI cards in particular cause a higher current draw when shut down.
If you have either of those installed, consider testing with them removed, as I don’t think there is any option to turn off the usb ports power out function.

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#3

This is the first laptop I’ve ever used that suffers from this issue, and I’ve used a lot of laptops over the years. Regardless, you make an excellent suggestion and I’ll pull the HDMI and USB-A modules out, let it set for another week, and see what happens (though this will be a cappy solution to my problem if it works).

This issue really concerns me as it will cause accelerated battery wear.

#4

Have you upgraded to BIOS 3.07 yet? sorry, didn’t read carefully enough.

#5

So I pulled all the modules out of my laptop, powered it down completely, and put a sticky note on it that reads “01/18/22, battery at 84%”. Today (01/20/22), the battery is down to 81%, just sitting in its bag, FULLY POWERED OFF AND DOING NOTHING.

I contacted support and they said,

Regarding the laptop draining the power, it is normal even when the laptop is turned off.It will consume a small increment of the battery juice for a period of time especially a week as all laptop does regardless of the brand or specs.
And since the Framework Laptop battery is factored for ultra-thins, it will show that it’s getting an increment of power consumption.

I’m sorry, but this is utter horse manure. I’ve never in my life owned a laptop that would drain 3% of its battery just for sitting powered down for a couple of days. This will lead to excessive discharge/charges cycles on the battery and this is an issue that should be fixed. If I weren’t outside the return window, I would return my laptop and I sure won’t be recommending their products to anyone any more.

#6

Does anyone have data of other laptops with the ultra-thins battery? Is this drain normal? I am curious to hear 2nd opinion.

#7

Perhaps the battery might be losing quite a few % after shutdown because according to Battery University, self-discharge of lithium ion batteries is highest in the first 24 hours.

I think this is a little extreme over an issue like this, as this battery drain issue wouldn’t really have a significant impact on most users and it’s easy to get around this problem by leaving the laptop plugged in whenever you can after shutting it down. This is their first product, so it’s unfair at best to compare it to products from more established companies and then use this comparison and a flaw that might not cause that many issues to most users to justify not recommending their products to anyone.

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#8

I use the Framework laptop only about once a month or two, where it sits in its bag fully powered down the rest of the time. When I do need to use it, I expect the battery to be where I left it (just like every other laptop I’ve owned). I have a mid 2015 Macbook Pro sitting in my closet for the last 3 months and the battery is right where I left it.

My complaint may sound “extreme” to you, but to me, it’s adding more wear cycles of charge/discharge on may laptop’s battery which leads to earlier battery death. This isn’t what I paid for and just because the laptop sits fully powered down in its bag for a month doesn’t mean it should lose nearly a third of its charge.

You also didn’t see my eariler problem where after sitting for a month, the RTC battery discharged and the computer wouldn’t boot from battery, despite having a 97% charge. This issue seems to have been fixed with the 3.07 bios beta, but again, it’s just another battery-related issue I’ve had to deal with.

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#9

Thanks for the info about the battery!

In my sense, it’s okay for Framework Laptop to have an issue, comparing it to the other companies products with the same ultra slim battery from more established companies.

But perhaps the issue here is how to tell to a user.

Framework could say such as “Sorry to hear your experience. But we are trying to improve the battery issues” or “We measured the other laptops with the same type of ultra slim battery, and the result was similar. So, we think it’s normal with this battery. But we are trying to improve …”. Maybe If I were a person asking this question to Framework, I wanted to hear Framework’s will to improve the product and words to adjust user’s expectation in the conversation.

If Framework would publish a blog about the battery in the future, it might be helpful to adjust users expectations.

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#10

The Framework laptop is awsome in so many ways, but having core battery issues just ruins it for me. Like I’ve said in several other posts, I’ve owned a wide variety of laptops over the years, and NONE of them drained the battery when sitting power down like the Framework does.

#11

I see. That’s sad thing. Hope we will find the root cause or the way of improving this battery drain in the state of the powered down in the future. I am looking forward to seeing the firmware to be open. That was mentioned here, and someone would find a way to improve the battery or some day Framework would ship a better CPU in term of the battery.

#12

I just searched about “battery drain after shut down”. Here are some info.

https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-hardware-18/battery-draining-after-shutdown-4175628580/#post5848862

$ sudo shutdown -H -P +0

-H = halt
-P = power off
+0 = now

The syntax of shutdown changed with systemd. Some things still us OLD methods $(shutdown -h now), which doesn’t always do the things on NEW hardware.

There could also be extras like usb ports ON, wake on lan, and such which DO have UEFI options. Although buried in some cases, you have to disable / enable and such various options to “expose” those options. I had to delete windows keys just to have the secure boot disable save between boots on my hp 15 machines. ba053nr / bw053od

As a work around you might press and hold the power button 5+ seconds after shutting down to hardware shutdown. Although not the best practice when it comes to spinning rust drives.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/974573/battery-drains-down-even-after-shut-down

Remove the battery for several hours and check if it will drain out. If the battery still charged, it should be healthy.

One possible trouble maker could be any USB port or other device that still powered while the system is shut down.

Extra powered USBs are feature for some laptops. Usually these ports are yellow colored. Port as this could be troublemaker especially if something is plugged in this port. In most cases this feature could be disabled via the BIOS settings.

Recently I’ve discovered that the new batteries should be charged to 100%. Unfortunately I can’t find the source of this statement but this solve my problem with my new battery jump drain from ~35% to 5%.

I don’t understand this well. But it might be a clue.

https://windowsreport.com/battery-drain-shutdown/

This is for Windows. But there might be a clue.

Linux battery life tuning
#13

https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-laptop-and-netbook-25/battery-drains-while-off-acpi-related-4175429035/#post4830887

I finally found the cause of the issue: the command “hwclock --systohc --local” causes the battery to drain when the laptop is off.
This command is executed by the /etc/init.d/hwclock script.
If I set clock_hctosys=“NO” in /etc/conf.d/hwclock, that command does not get executed anymore, and the battery does not drain.

#14

We will take a look at this. Sounds like something is setting the RTC wake causing the laptop to go to S4 instead of S5.

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#15

Keep in mind, the laptop is sitting powered off, completely shut down. This is not a suspend or hibernate issue.

#16

Yeah, I understand your situation. That’s why I did not share the articles about suspend/sleep above.

#17

@junaruga, I’m running on Fedora 35, so there’s no such file/path as /etc/conf.d/hwclock. And whereas there is /etc/init.d/, there is no hwclock config file located there. On Fedora 35, there’s an hwclock binary used to sync the clock on demand. Maybe the NTP service leverages it, not sure. Regardless, with the system powered off, I wouldn’t think any Linux services would be running.

#18

Yes, the article about the hwclock command is old. Fedora 35 doesn’t use init.d things, and instead uses systemd to control daemons (services).
My assumption was if the command is just executed in the process of the shutdown, it might cause the battery drain.

I can see there is hwclock command on Fedora 35.

$ rpm -qf /usr/sbin/hwclock
util-linux-2.37.2-1.fc35.x86_64

But I don’t know how to check the executed commands in the process of the shut down. Maybe do something with systemctl.

#19

It seems the journalctl -b 1 shows the both last boot and last shutdown log? I am running Fedora 35 too.

$ journalctl -b 1 | tail -100
#20

I did a journalctl -b 1 | tail -n 500 | grep -i hwclock and journalctl -b 1 | tail -n 500 | grep -i ntp and got no hits on either (where I’m assuming NTP might call hwclock).