Hi everyone,
I’ve had my Framework 13 since 2023. Unfortunately, a few days ago I accidentally caused water damage to it (my own fault and it was really stupid!), and now there’s a short circuit on the mainboard.
Since I need the laptop for work, I already ordered a replacement mainboard. However, I’ve now discovered that the battery is no longer outputting any voltage.
After some investigation:
The cell voltages are still within normal range
The chemical fuse doesn’t seem to be blown
I suspect the BMS (BQ40Z50) inside the battery pack is preventing both charging and discharging
Has anyone else experienced this issue?
I’m about to try reading the SMBus status to see what’s going on internally.
There are schematics on GitHub about Framework’s battery pins.
You can first try charging the battery using a bench power supply(as a whole, not doing per cell), as the shout circuit could disconnect the battery and charging it will recover. If that doesn’t work, wait until the repair or replacement mainboard arrives and use pd charging normally and see if that helps. The EC should reconnect the battery automatically when the USBC PD is plugged in
(very unlikely) If that still doesn’t work, use a EV2400 module and try to troubleshoot it. There are many tutorials online.
If still not sure, you can bring the battery pack to a repair shop (must be able to do board-level repair), identify and replace the faulty chip and/or electrical components.
If you plug the battery into a working mainboard, and use the “ectool battery 0” command, it should give you more details about the state of the battery.
e.g.
sudo ectool battery 0
interfaces:0xffffffff
comm_init_dev being used /dev/cros_ec
Battery 0 info:
OEM name: NVT
Model number: FRANDBAT01
Chemistry : LION
Serial number: 0084
Design capacity: 5491 mAh
Last full charge: 3553 mAh
Design output voltage 15480 mV
Cycle count 109
Present voltage 15446 mV
Present current 0 mA
Remaining capacity 2464 mAh
Desired voltage 17600 mV
Desired current 5491 mA
Flags 0x0b AC_PRESENT BATT_PRESENT CHARGING
Things to watch out for.
If the battery gets very low, < 4% (Remaining Capacity / Design Capacity), it might never recover, but the EC firmware tries to recover it by trying to charge very slowly. So this might appear as no life in the battery, but it is in a recovery mode. It might take a while for it to get above 4%.
If the battery is low and says “Desired current 0.0 mA”, then it is unlikely to recover.
If the battery is low but the desired current is 0.0mA
You can use $ sudo ectool chargestate param 1 2500 (2500 is mA charge current) you can change it to a different value as long as it’s below 1C. It’ll force the EC to charge the battery instead of blindly listens to the BMS. Of course it’ll only effective for about 1 seconds so you’ll have to spam it in the terminal. (previous reply updated as a short circuit on the main board is unlikely to cause permanent damage to the battery circuit)
Until the battery is no longer low
If there’s one, why not go to a repair shop and have the laptop board-level repaired if there’s only a short circuit
Kudos to you for trying to get the the root of the issue. In the grand scheme of things consider just ordering a new battery, it is a fraction of the cost of a mainboard and will allow getting back to using it for work.
Then a spare battery would be on hand if it is needed in the future. Now if someone could come up with a 3D printable case for to make it a portable external battery pack that would be incredible. (With the appropriate connectors and circuitry to charge it of course)
Thanks for the many supplies. I was able to remove the short circuit on the mainboard, and I think the battery outputs no voltage when it’s not connected to a mainboard, apparently.
Not booting yet sadly, but i mean lights lets fucking go :))). And i have to say that it was realy stupid to cut the battay open, but hey things happen right?
Did you try to re assemble the mainboard with the battery plugged in back to the computer and booting up normally using PD charging(after removing the short circuit from the mainboard)? Can you check the battery with $upower -i $(upower -e | grep battery) ?
Hi,
i have acturly looked in to this and came to the conculsion that its not worthit. I am i building a Powerbank (on of the Projectes of mein) and Imo the FW battary is to expensice, too small and the formfactor is realy wiered for a Powerbank
Unrealeded i trieded that command: Big F only 43Wh left maby new battary after all
░▒▓ ~ ▓▒░ upower -i $(upower -e | grep battery) ░▒▓ ✔ ▓▒░
native-path: BAT1
vendor: NVT
model: Framewo
serial: 0488
power supply: yes
updated: Wed 15 Oct 2025 10:34:32 AM CEST (6 seconds ago)
has history: yes
has statistics: yes
battery
present: yes
rechargeable: yes
state: charging
warning-level: none
energy: 13.321 Wh
energy-empty: 0 Wh
energy-full: 43.4588 Wh
energy-full-design: 55.0088 Wh
energy-rate: 34.8964 W
voltage: 16.518 V
charge-cycles: 54
time to full: 51.8 minutes
percentage: 30%
capacity: 79.0034%
technology: lithium-ion
icon-name: 'battery-good-charging-symbolic'
History (charge):
1760517251 30.000 charging
1760517204 29.000 charging
History (rate):
1760517272 34.896 charging
1760517251 34.973 charging
1760517221 36.375 charging
1760517204 36.051 charging
1760517174 35.820 charging
Your battery is not even damaged, just put it back to the computer and charge normally in the laptop. No need to use bench power supply or SMB analyser. Charge to 100% and keep it charged for additional 2 hours to calibrate the full capacity, an example. 30 percentage at 16.518V means the percentage needs calibration, normally a full charge will do that, if not, a discharge-charge cycle will
But at the time i execute this command the battary was charging so i woude think that this is just the charging voltage. 4.2 * 4 (because 4s pack) = 16.8 so close enoug.
