Erratic battery charging behavior - FW13 upgraded from 11Gen Intel to Ryzen

Community Support
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System: Framework Laptop 13, 11th Gen Intel upgraded to Ryzen 7640u
OS: both “literally powered off” and Windows 11. Read on…

I’ve had an odd issue since I first got this laptop. It would charge… erratically. Over the months/years, I’ve found a pattern to it, to some extent. Let’s break it down:

When POWERED OFF (that is, in Hibernate or Shutdown state):

  1. Plugging in a USB-C supply will:
    a. Always start 20v USB-PD mode
    b. Randomly (but with a bias towards “will not charge”) either charge (orange LED) or not charge (white LED) immediately on plug-in. If “will charge”, it flickers white then stays orange; if “will not charge”, it seems to do the opposite.
    c. If “will not charge”, it literally will never charge. Come back hours later, white LED, battery at 15%, curse.
    d. If “will not charge”, unplug USB-C, wait a full 10 seconds for the white LED to go out, then immediately plug back in - 100% of the time, it will now charge.
  2. If battery is below 25% SOC, it will only trickle-charge until it reaches that point - at about 10-12 watt rate. Once it reaches that point, it will go full power (usually 45 watts).

While powered up (booted, sleep, etc), the logic is much simpler:

  1. It will charge, 100% of the time.
  2. It will still have the “25% SOC” problem. If the battery is lower than that, get ready to wait a long time to get up to a fast charging point.

Wondering if anyone has seen similar behavior. I run from battery 99% of the life of the system, only charging it as needed, then back to battery - powering all my electronics from solar is just a thing for me, so I use battery banks (like the Storm2 and OmniCharge) to distribute energy and keep with me to charge whatever I need, whereever I go. So, I see real-time wattage everywhere - and these issues stand out.

Would really be nice if I can get faster, more consistent charging. Maybe the battery itself is the issue, since this issue seems to have carried-over from the Intel board to the AMD board?

edit: off topic, but while we’re here, i’ll just note my protest of the “This topic will close 6 months after the last reply” policy. Forum thread time-based locks are counter-productive to everything a support forum is about. Contributes to link rot, dead-ends on web searches, and does nothing to help a community. Bad. Bad. Turn that off.

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The battery has a problem, contact Framework support for a replacement.

There’s another 25% problem that might be related

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I updated to the latest BIOS 3.05 (from 3.03), and while my charging patterns are sparse and irregular, I have been paying attention to whether I observe any oddities. So far, I haven’t yet had the “white LED” no-charging condition since updating. However, I can still say the 25%-and-lower, low-wattage charging issue persists. For what it’s worth. :slight_smile: