I have been using a FW16 (7840HS, iGPU) for about two weeks. While I like it very much in general, the battery charging is horrible. I tried multiple chargers, even bought a 140 W one at the request of Framework support. For all of them, charging is erratic. Despite the lack of any substantial CPU load the battery is discharging only to start tickle-charging at a later point in time taking ages to reach the configured charge limit.
I have exchanged an annoying amount of emails with Framework support without any clear outcome.
Has anybody seen such erratic charging behavior with your machine?
I am using Linux, but if I understand correctly charging is handled by the EC, so the operating system shouldn’t play much of a role here.
Agreed. I’ve used my FW 16 with a number of non-framework chargers, including the dinky low-wattage ones that come with my Pixel phones. But, others have demonstrated that some devices do not cooperate with the EC very well, i.e. in the case of the Anker 737 external battery’s controller. This may have been addressed in the beta 3.04 BIOS. It sounds like you’ve either got a lot of chargers that have something in common with the 737’s controller, or a laptop that needs at least one part RMA’d. Either way, something’s clearly not working as designed if it behaves as you’ve described. Additionally, the OS does not matter. The device will (or in your case should) charge even without an SSD installed.
What’s interesting is the discrepancy between the battery’s charge state and the state that is supposed to be reported. The operating system only gets to know the first number, not the display number.
There are people reporting Nexode 160W being incompatible here, and Anker 737 here. It’s unclear to me though if one of them means a powerbank while another just a wall charger, or not. But definitely you can see both brands not being 100% compatible, and cables used also playing a role
Wait: the Nexode 160W works very well in standard use and in charging.
Problems appear when you heavy load the dGPU (the 7700S) using the Nexode. Charging wise works wonders. If you don’t have the dGPU works as expected.