Feature Request: Bypass Battery in Desktop-Mode

Framework Laptop 16
1

Because this project is about sustainability and longevity, i always wondered, if it is possible to bypass the battery to save batterylife, (for example) when using the laptop connected to a monitor as a desktop-replacement.

Is this possible to add this as a feature in future ? Would this be technically be in any case possible without major problems?

Because if you want to save resources, energie and (to be honest) money, you want to replace your desktop with a laptop and connect eGPU (if needed). But if you are someone, who really work on his Desktop, you have to use it 8 hours a day and then, if you are in your freetime, you maybe want to play some games and so it will probably be 8-10 hours a day.

But if you have passthrough the power through the battery in a desktop-usage (which is actually quite stupid if you think about), your battery will be quite dead after 1-2 Years. So in fact, it is not really a good desktop-replacement nor it is sustainable and durable and that’s the idea behind framework i guess.

BUT, if we would be able to bypass battery, for example with a slider/switch or so, it would be an absolute perfect desktop-replacement (with oculink, but thats another story).

So i ask you framework: Does this have any chance to come available in future if people would like it/ask for it? Or is this technically a 100% “Not possible” ?

And i ask you community: Would you also like to see that to save your battery life? It would also be helpfull, even if you dont want to replace your desktop. Always, when you have access to power, you can (after charge the battery full again) change to “bypass-mode” and save battery life.

In my opinion, this would give this laptop a huge boost in sustainability and longevity, which is basically the philosophy behind framework i would say.

(This question is acutally not only related to the 16" model, but i’m more interested in this one so i postet it here)

8 Likes
2

There is at least the possibility to set the tresholds at which the battery is being charged again and at which it stops. On both Windows and Linux, but on Windows it usually requires a special manufacturer tool to do so. No idea if there is something like that for Framework laptop as I’m still waiting for mine.

This would at least prevent keeping the battery close to max all the time as windows does it by default. I read there is a BIOS option to disable the battery, but it’s not something you can toggle from the OS (yet)?

The drawback is that you have to reboot to enable the battery again. Ideally this should switch to battery automatically once the power is lost.

3

Thanks for your answer!

Holding Battery on a specific level is better than always on 100%, but it does absolutly not bypass the battery nor does it prevent the battery from cycle-counts. So it has nothing to do with the actual bypass-feature :slight_smile:

Let’s say i play games with the new 16" with GPU 10 hours on a weekend 2 days (20 hours). It will use several cycles of battery, doesnt matter if i am on 100% or 80% or 50%. It will for sure be very much better on 50% or 80%, but it has nothing to do with the feature to bypass battery. But after 20 hours of constant gaming i probably have 30-40 Cycles.

So this is really about a TRUE bypass.

To the BIOS thing: Could you link to it, where you read that you can disable battery?

But what does that actually mean, “disable” ? If i disable it, will the power be bypass the battery? I really don’t think, this is possible with a non-hardware related change. If i don’t physically change sth. on hardware (like with a switch), how should it be possible to bypass the battery physically ?

But if this BIOS-thing really bypass the battery, it would be absolutely great. Restarting the computer would be a bit annoying, but it would at least be a workaround.

EDIT: The BIOS Thing does not work: Disconnecting/reconnecting the battery? - #2 by nadb

If you do that and plug in a charger, it will automaticly reconnect the battery, so it can not be used for bypass battery.

So my question is still there: Is there any chance of getting a battery-bypass-feature?

1 Like
4

Or i have another Idea to bypass battery without a switch/slider:

Instead of using a switch, it could be possible to use a bypass-connection to a USB-C extension-card. The connection will bypass the battery. So this extension-card USB-C slot would not be able to charge the battery, so it would only be like a powersupply. So you would have to “sacrifice” one of your extension slots to use it as a direct-charger.

Just an idea.

1 Like
5

You could probably do quite a bit in the ec if you wated to but imo this doesn’t really make all that much sense.

Small state of charge changes cause very little wear, gaming with the battery installed is going to do a lot more damage by just cooking the battery (especially doing so at a high soc) than the few mah in and out every so often.

100 71%->70% and back cycles don’t cause anywhere near as much wear as 1 100%->0% one.

1 Like
6

Yeah, gaming the whole day while plugged in is exactly a scenario, which i described before?

So i don’t understand your point. Your english is hard to understand for me.

Using a laptop as a desktop-replacement 10 hours a day wear out battery a lot faster, also if you limit it to 50% battery level.

As i said before: This thread is about bypassing battery and NOT “how to treat your battery gently”.

So please don’t spam with that topic. The question is not “how to treat your battery”.

Back to Topic:

Would this bypass the battery and if yes, does this work with a framework laptop? Could someone test that ?

Edit: And do you think there is any case of damage your laptop by using only a charger (in case of voltage stability or such stuff). It’s clear that data can be lost, if the charger get disconnected. Like on a desktop too.

7

The heat part plays it’s role too there, in the case of your 50% scenario it is probably the main factor.

In that case playing with the ec and telling the battery to disconnect would probably be the cleanest solution, though probably quite a bit of work. (Just don’t forget to re-enable it before unplugging XD)

Well if you unplug the battery that would definitely bypass it XD (Though the imo more significant heat damage is still there).

If you go as far as to open up the laptop every time you switch from desktop to mobile use, you might as well remove the battery entirely each time which would also protect it from the heat damage and not just the minuscule cycle damage.

As long as the charger isn’t doing anything funky the worst that could happen is the laptop crashing with the mentioned data loss.

I have run multiple different laptops of just the charger before and never had problems with that but I can’t guarantee it will work for the framework 16, pretty likely though. The utility of the exercise is a different question though but you do you.

8

I dont know how to quote here

Yeah i mean when i disable the device in device manager, it is only disappearing in windows. I dont know, if it is really disabled on device-side and if the current does not passthrough the battery. For example: When i disable my graphics card on my desktop in device-manger, it does still consume the same power as before. What i want to say: I dont know, if the device (the battery) is still charging.

Im currently testing that on my laptop (i have no framework atm). I did a battery-report before and disabled it and now im running a game with disabled battery. after 1-2 hours i will run again a battery-report and look, if i have more cycle counts.

If the battery on Framework would be a easy plug-in, i would do that. But i have to open up the whole device to do that. So it is a completly other level than just open up device manager and disable/reenable it. But if the battery would be on the outside, i would just plug it out.

I run my old laptop also without any battery inbetween. Because it’s dead and it is exactly one of those laptops, where i have a switch and beeing able to unplug the battery. But as i said, sadly this is not the case with Framework.

Temperatur: Ok, this is a point i did not mention. But if the battery is on a different location in the device, as the heat-generating hardware, i think this should not be a huge problem. Especially when i would use a e-GPU. On other devices (like my laptop :smiley: ), this could really be the major issue. Because on my device one of the two batteries sits somewhere behind/next the cpu (like in a tablet/smartphone).

But it is a good point and

9

Disabling it in device manager is definitely not the same as disabling it from ec or something, it pretty much just stops windows from interacting with it but that’s about it.

The embedded controller could either tell the charge controller to not charge the battery at all or it could tell the battery to fully disconnect itself but both of those options would require implementation and testing.

If you get any more that would probably be more of an error in cycle tracking than anything else. Windows doesn’t really have a say on what the charge controller does or does not do, that the embedded controllers domain.

Pretty much with all the laptops I have owned, extended use tended to heat up the whole device but by how much varied a lot between them. I am very curious about how the cooling on the 16 is going to work out. If you use an egpu it may not be a huge problem especially if the fan profiles are a bit aggressive but we’ll see.

10

Why should the Battery-Report report false things? Till now it was quite acurate.

But i can also see it on battery load state. When i play now 1-2 hours, then actiavte the battery on device manager again and when i then have 100% battery, it clearly don’t work i guess.

Yes, my device heat up completly. But other devices maybe not.

But at the end i would still like to have a real bypass feature on the framework laptop.

11

Off topic, sorry. Just select the bit of text from the post you want to quote and a little button to quote that text will pop up.

1 Like
12

Thanks. Actually the best quote-system i ever saw in a forum. If you know how to use it xD

3 Likes
13

I agree with @Adrian_Joachim, in that you probably don’t need it. Maybe you shouldn’t even want it.
Some background:

On the FW13, the following bios-functionality is available:

  1. Charge limit (see FW bios releases, from version 3.07)
    You can set it to for example 80% to save your battery life.
  2. Battery disconnect
    Available since the first version.
  3. Boot without battery (see FW bios releases, from version 3.06)

There are a few buts though:
Option 2. resets when you plug in a charger again, as also said before. It is meant for when you are opening up the laptop.

With bios version from 3.06 (option 3.), you can run the FW13 without a battery attached. Perfect if you want a Framedeck or use the FW13 Coolermaster-case.
This limits availabe power though (depending on the charger you use).

  • With a 60W charger + battery:
    The laptop can boost above 60W without a power failure: it will also drain the battery a (tiny) bit, depending on how long this boost holds.
  • With a 60W charger, without the battery:
    You will be limited to 60W. You can however use a 100W charger to overcome this problem.

With the FW16, these options are not confirmed (nor denied) at this point, although I would definitely expect options 1 and 2 to be available from very soon on in the bios.

If these options are available, I would recommend gaming with the battery attached, to be able to briefly get more power out of the laptop. Or possibly use a higher power charger.
In the end you will be limited to the cooling capacity of the laptop and maximum temperatures before throttling of the CPU/GPU. Loads however are not continuously the same, so the extra boost is nice when the temperature allows it.

Coming back to battery wear, what Adrian_Joachim said earlier is definitely true:

It is way worse for battery wear to cycle from 100% to 0% once than to cycle around 70% a hundred times.

For a Li-Ion battery, a charge/discharge curve typically looks like this:
Li-ion+Discharge+Voltage+Curve+Typical-1520800647
Large drop between 100-90%, almost flat between 80-20%, and again a large drop between 20-0%.
These large drops cause the worst wear. Charging/discharging in the flat area almost none.
So, if you set the charge limit to say 80 or 70%, you will be in the flat, low-wear area and yes, the battery will charge/discharge a bit for higher loads, but without a noticeable impact.

Concluding:
If you set the charge limit right, battery wear in desktop mode due to charging/discharging should not be noticeable, but it will allow higher boosts.

For reference: I have a FW13 as a daily driver for 1.5 years now, most often used in desktop mode and the charge limit set to 80%.
According to linux’ upower, I have 52 charge cycles.

4 Likes
14

This is the same as the BIOS battery disconnect function, and its not intended for that. It’s a safety feature for shipping and service.

Also, once you enable the battery disconnect via the EC (which is also how the BIOS does it – the UEFI setup menu option is just a UI for the EC option), it cannot be disabled without powering off and unplugging/replugging the charger.

1 Like
15

You can’t really pass power through a battery. A battery can either have power put into it or power pulled out of it, not both at the same time.

The main situation where that would happen is if the laptop was rapidly switching between charging and discharging instead of just operating off wall power.

The only time I’ve seen any laptop do that was when my Lenovo laptop received a very buggy BIOS and it was promptly fixed with the next update.

For the most part when connected to a charger laptops will draw power from the charger without touching the battery whenever possible. When under heavier load than the charger can keep up with most laptops will tap into the battery for extra power but even then that’s not a lot of power drawn.

4 Likes
16

@FlorisNielssen : As morpheus said, option 2 is not intended to use as i want (and will also not work).

Option 1 is no real option.
Option 3 is meant to completly remove the battery and as i said, that’s no point if you want to use it as a laptop and a desktop.

So in the End, there is no option atm.

I know, that between 80 and 20% the batterylife is expanded alot, but again, that’s absolutely not my question. I am not searching for “ho to treat your battery” guides.

About charge cycles: Devices does count 0-100% as 1 cycles, doesnt matter if it happened always between 100-90% or 60-70%. So 1 charge cycle can be a bad one or a good one. You can not see that on a battery report.

I for example have ~200 cycles on my laptop and i do not often use it as a desktop nor do i use it every day atm (because i have a desktop). How often do you use it as desktop or how often do you use your laptop generally?

When you have 50 cycles it seems you did not use your laptop very often. When i use it, i need ~ 1 cylce (1.5-2 times from 20-80%) per day. So 50 cycles in 1.5 years means you did use only 1 cycle each 11 days. So how can you assess that using as a desktop has no real degredation, when you have so less cycle counts? Because people which are using a device as a working-device use the battery 11 times harder than you. So no wonder you see no battery-degradation, if you have only 50 cycles after 550 days. So i mean you can’t say because of your 50 cycles after 1.5 year, it does not wear when you use it as a desktop.

@Kyle_Reis : im not native english speaker. It’s just a word. I just mean the power is going through the battery and does not bypass it.

But for sure you dont see that. How many laptops do you have? I refer to other people. I mean, one person with some laptops is no argument. But do you use your laptop as a Desktop 8 hours a day 5 days a week ~48 weeks a year?

So you are saying, the frameworklaptop is bypassing already, if you plug in a charger (and it has reached the max. battery level) ? So when i plug in my charger into my laptop (when he is fully charged), play a game for some hours i should NOT se any charge cycle if that is true, right?

Can someone from framework confirm this?

I thought a laptop is charging and then stopping, then the laptop uses battery again and then the charger is again charging and so on.

17

The use-case itself doesn’t make all that much sense to me, I was just discussing options.

1 Like
18

Power cannot go through batteries. That’s not how batteries work.

A battery cannot be used while charging. So while the battery is charging any power being used by the rest of the system must be bypassing the battery.

The main way for that to actually be a problem is if the laptop was programmed in a way that it disconnected the charger once done charging.

For example when my current main laptop (Lenovo) got a BIOS update (I think it was the first update after the laptop was released) it introduced an odd behavior where once it reached 100% charge it disconnected the charger and operated exclusively on battery power until it was drained to 97% charge, at which point it reconnected the charger and charged back to 100% and repeated the cycle. Effectively rapidly bouncing the battery between 97% and 100% and increasing cycle count.

Once the next BIOS update was released that behavior was fixed and it just held the charge at 100% constantly and didn’t increase the cycle count.

Basically the two options with how batteries work are the laptop can either bypass the battery or it can rapidly bounce the battery between two different charge levels.

In other words a battery cannot accumulate charge cycles without experience a change in charge level.

I’ve observed the bypassing battery behavior on multiple laptops, although admittedly they were all Lenovo laptops and I don’t yet have my Framework laptop so it is possible that the Framework laptop behaves differently.

I don’t currently but for a while during COVID I did and after that year of using it that way the reported cycle count was only around 70, which was only a bit higher than it was when COVID began (and the battery was pretty new).

Assuming it behaves like my Lenovo laptops then yes as long as your charger can supply as much power as the laptop can draw.

2 Likes
19

Yeah, that’s exactly the way i always thought it works. I thought it will charge to 100% and then (for example) at 97% it starts charging again and therefore it is using cycles and that on a high voltage level (97-100%). I believe, some years ago this was normal on Smartphones, or not ?

But for sure it can’t accumulate cycles without a change in charging level. I just thought, the example above from you is the way it normally works.

But is this general usage in laptop-industry or do that only some devices? Because if that do (more or less) all laptops out there, it has already i bypass.

So the Answer on my question is: it can already bypass and a “switch” is absolutely useless, because it can do it already.

The only important thing is now, that you can set a charge-limit. Otherwise you will operate 100% of time at a high voltage (100% battery status).

20

On my old Dell Precision, I could set a min-max level it would try to keep the battery in.
I set it to 75-85%, which means it will stop charging when hitting 85% and only start charging when at 75%.
If the battery was in-between (e.g. 82%) it would stay there the whole time it’s plugged in.

The PSU I had was oversized so it never needed to get power from the battery if not needed.

After using it for 6½ years the battery had ~80% of its original capacity and only about ~800 cycles used.

We have an 11-year old Samsung that had an option in the BIOS to limit charge at 80%, it still has about 50% usable battery life left.

If the Framework is similar in that it doesn’t try and keep the battery at 100% all the time (which it sounds like is the case, depending on config in the bios) then the battery would probably last a decade if you don’t let it run down every day.

So I think it’s a non issue as long as the BMS is sensible.

2 Likes