Feature Request Megathread

That depends…

At some point, say 800 0.1% top-ups vs 4000 0.1% top-ups. Somewhere, charging once from 70% to 80% might be better than 4000 0.1% top-ups. There’s a switch over point somewhere.

(Also, note that the 0.1% is typically a result of some rounding value evaluation…where the actual drop could be less because the calculation is “less than” the stop charging threshold (but doesn’t state “how much less”.)

The additional complication with the Framework laptop is that the 60W brick is not able to fully support the load requirement of the laptop if the CPU goes into boost (in conjunction with power load needs of the memory, SSD…and other components)…which results in the battery used to supplement the additional power source need during boost.

See this note from Notebookcheck:
image

This means the battery change dropping (once charged to the threshold) can be due to actual battery load…as oppose to typically self-discharge.

In many other laptops, the power brick typically has sufficient wattage to fully supply the laptop with even when boosting, without causing a momentary discharge from the built-in battery. For my Framework Laptop, this isn’t the case.

@Second_Coming

Thanks for the info!
But if the >60W power requirement would be the issue , it would require an extremely heavy, spiked load to keep exceeding, and dropping below 60W to force a switch between charge / discharge. (also would require not hitting thermal throttling for a prolonged period of time). For me this feels like an extreme edge-case.

The “rounding issue” sounds to be a one-time phenomenon, once it charged above it, it should not happen again until a discharge could allow for the rounding issue to happen again. (am I missing something?)

Also, I’m not sure why would a very small amount of added charge be a problem even if it happens thousands of times. To my knowledge, this is how drip-charging a battery happens, when it’s close to max charge. Could you please elaborate on the reason, why this is bad?

In my view, this should all be handled by the charge controller, with full knowledge about exact details of the cell in use, and would be outside the responsibilities of the mainboard firmware (etc.)

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Launching applications can trigger 60W boost… Various productivity related workloads have the momentary burst of compute needs…render pages, emails, loading spreadsheets, creating charts, image layer processing…etc. It’s just that they may / may not show up as 60W boost due to the sampling frequency of the read outs.

…and it does get discharge…due to the repeated boost.

The scenario is different here…it’s not due to self-discharge where the battery management IC tries to maintain / top-up the charge level. It’s due to load discharge. That is, depending on the compute requirement use case, you may run into repeated discharge / charge cycles. As such, it’s different from how drip-charging got into the state where it requires a top-up…and also the frequency of charging is different here.

It can be partially mitigated by going with something like a 90W or 100W PD adapter.

The Stop Charging Threshold has been implemented via the EC.

The focus here is not on whether it damages the battery or not (for the Start Charging Threshold). But rather, having the control of whether the battery gets charged or not, without introducing physical plugging / unplugging / port wear and tear / manual procedure, especially for long-plugged-in units.

Other brands such as Dell, Lenovo have implemented it…there are use cases for it…whether someone on the individual level may / may not need it.

Coming from the What should we build next?, I repost my thougth:

I think, Frame.work should first stable the business to worldwide shipping and support inclusive B2B.

The laptop itself can still be improved: more processors (AMD!), more form factors, more screens, cameras, fair production and raw materials, etc.

It would be best to have a survey on what the community wants.

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Really happy with the Laptop.

I want ECC RAM. !!!

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To support all of the features listed below, a Thinkpad style chassis, or to get away from using brand names, a business/professional/light industrial chassis; Take inspiration from the T61 or the last era of classic Thinkpads from Lenovo with the IBM era style 7-row keyboard. This also includes a durable plastic exterior (in flat/matte black as an option please). Overall get away from Apple-inspired design for this chassis.

Most would term this a chunky/thicker case option than the stock chassis, which is technically true but those terms applied to laptops usually form a negative connotation, anyone requesting this just wants a chassis that has adequate room for all the features that come along with the request, and essentially it’s a call to ignore thickness/slim design as a major criterion for the total thickness of the design. As long as it’s no thicker than a 2010s ThinkPad, I think most asking for such a chassis would not have any complaints.

*Water/liquid drainage built into this new chassis would be awesome but not a dealbreaker/maker

  • Downward-facing LED light on display bezel (Thinklight style) for document or other illumination needs
  • Bezel-mounted status/activity lights
  • Manual kill switch for WiFi & BlueTooth
  • Physical webcam privacy cover
  • Trackpoint style mouse input options WITH dedicated top trackpad PHYSICAL buttons
  • A low-profile mechanical and/or Classic Thinkpad style 7-row keyboard
  • Wacom or other pen stylus digitizer
  • Matte/non-reflective screen
  • Quick swap external battery (would also be awesome if this used 18650 or other off-the-shelf/industry standard-sized lithium cells)
  • a dedicated GPU option (either gaming-oriented or workstation, both preferably)
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Since my original post of this went into the wrong thread, I’m fine posting it all here. Makes more sense.

->Expansion Cards: The fit is loose and lack good tolerances. Most importantly we are stuck with a laptop that can only have 3 ports :frowning: given one is for charging. A separate charging port on the laptop so it doesn’t eat up one expansion port would be good, even if it was just for charging. I think it would have been better to make the left side full of all the needed ports, RJ45, SD, USB, USB-C, then on the right side have 2 expansion cards like what you have now. Best of both worlds without compromising on ports and needing dongles or extra card swapping. I’d love a laptop with both SD and mSD slots.

->Screen Options - glossy, matte, touch, 13.5" then do a 15" then a 14" then a 16". This is easy, you simply make new cases and lids. Same mainboard, just a side width extension for the thunderbolt ports. You could even have started with the same battery if you had to then offer bigger ones later. Choose a 16:10 screen format so there are lots of choices out to choose from. The 3:2 format is limited in panel choices and resolutions. There’s no reason you couldn’t offer a matte, heck the screen you have now comes in both matte and glossy. Look for screens with a wider color gamut so you can get professionals who do editing pictures and videos. Adobe RGB or DCIP3 will blow your socks off seeing those side by side with sRGB what most people are used to. Oh and keep the screens 400 or better 500 nits of brightness.

->I think the laptop may simply be too thin. A thicker laptop and you could have a bigger battery, kinda stuck now with what you have.

->A little bigger fan and you could have kept it quiet. Something everyone wants is a quiet laptop. The thermal capacity of the 12th gen is a lot, and there are plenty of complaints of fan noise. Thicker laptop could lead to a thicker fan.

->Heat pipes are a bit small, when comparing to what other manufacturers are using.

->offer U series chips. They are simply the best choice for laptops, especially thin ones. It shouldn’t be too hard change the mainboards, much easier than changing to AMD chips. I’m sure people think they want a P series, but offer the U if it isn’t too much work because they would surprise the community in what is actually capable of in real world use. Having a P series that’s thermally limited to a U doesn’t do much good, but eat up more battery life.

->I understand the choice you made for Intel, but you have a large number of customers asking for AMD… something to consider.

->Keyboard Choices, there’s no reason you can’t offer different keyboards with different travel and force. Your existing keyboard has good force but feels mushy, it’s not tactile like. You should make the ctrl and fn keys the same width, allow people to swap them physically and in the bios. Easy thing to do and opens more doors for people that want thinkpad/mac style. Easy to do.

->Color… offer it as a choice, and perhaps build your own identity. I think a dark gray would be ideal for a laptop… seriously, dark gray would look awesome with a black keyboard

->ruggedized case option, oh lots of people would love that. Think half way between a normal laptop and a Toughbook. But it has to have a handle on it like the Toughbook, I’m jealous of my friends have have Toughbooks because the handle is so nice.

->m.2 slot for 4G that could be used for a 2nd hard drive… but if you’re limited by pci lanes I understand why it wasn’t implemented. Keep the main SSD 4 lanes for sure.

->magnesium instead of aluminum housing option?
->different hinge design that fixes the wobble - please? Perhaps a hack that puts something into the hinge as hysteresis would help?
->oh and the little booklet you send with the laptop, how can anyone read that small of print? Please make it bigger.

These are all doable things and repeated many times by others. Let’s focus on what your customers are asking for and your business will grow.

I don’t know all the technical terms, or the specs, but I’m looking for a powerful creator laptop. I want at least 15-16 inch OLED screen, Core-i7 processor or similar, 16 to 32 GB RAM, 1-2 T DDR, massive battery life, really high refresh rate. You get the gist. Lots of ports. Separate graphics card.

Title pretty much says it all. My work just got me a Lenovo Yoga and it’s just so much nicer for my workflow to be able to flip the screen around and navigate and interact by touch. A bunch of apps I use for my day job, side gigs, and a few for entertainment work better with touch and as much as I love my Framework, I really miss being able to do those things on my own laptop. My one hope is that I could some day install a touchscreen on my Framework much more easily than I could probably so much as upgrade RAM on the Yoga (haven’t verified that, don’t quote me).

Would a mid-lid hinge like on the old Sony Vaio Flips or the Surface Studios be easier to implement with the current body design than a 360 style hinge? Or hell, just a touch interface with the current 4kg hinges would be an improvement.

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Hi, there is some posibilities for dedicated gpu renaissance with framework?

Can we have a UEFI toggle to disable Modern Standby S0 sleep from the firmware? This helps work around a battery drainage issue from a poor implementation of the feature by Microsoft.

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I Second the Modern standby feature. I want actual S1, S2, S3 Sleep states! Not the garbage “modern” standby!

I have just bought a second hand X280, after avoiding Thinkpads for many decades because of price to performance.

I think this would be expensive, but with the the new BIOS firmware, can I request for something similar to Thinkpad’s UEFI diagnostic menu?

I kinda missed built in BIOS diagnostics. I use boot drives for stuff like memtest on my desktop when troubleshooting.

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As Framework adds upgrades, you should add ways of reusing that part. Obviously you guys already demoed a battery enclosure, but a display enclosure to make your old one into an external display would be great, especially if you guys make a touch screen. I wouldn’t want to upgrade my screen if it meant wasting a perfectly good piece of tech. Also an enclosure for the track pad and keyboard might be a good idea, maybe even the camera.

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Hey! New here.

Been eyeing FW laptops for a while, really like the concept. There’s one thing that’s making me hesitate on buying a Framework 13 – the lack of ports. I appreciate the customisation, however i think 4 ports is really too less. My current HP laptop for example has 2x USB A, 1x Type C, 1x HDMI, 1x LAN, 1x SIM card, 1x headphone jack and a couple of enterprise focused slots. My previous Dell also had 3x USB, a VGA port, headphone and mic jacks, LAN, and SD card slot. So I would like to suggest the following changes to the current 4 expansion ports available on the framework 13:

  1. Provide 2x USB-A ports instead of 1x on each USB-A expansion card. This will at least increase the density of ports. So e.g. 2x USB-C + 1x double USB-A card + HDMI could be viable for many people.
  2. Hardwire one USB-C on each side of the laptop, and then leave two more slots on each side for customization.

I think both steps together will significantly improve the situation (but there are probably other ways too). Otherwise at the moment it feels like I’m either going to carry around a lot of expansion cards, or just end up with 2-4x USB-C ports and carry around a multi-port hub.

Currently in my daily usage I might use 3x USB-A, 1x USB-C, 1x HDMI and 1x power connector simultaneously. Sometimes I may also want to read an SD card or connect to ethernet. So I’d want at least 6-8 ports on my laptop, and having to switch them out frequently would be a bit annoying.

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This has been suggested quite a few times and there’s actually a dedicated thread for it. Unfortunately it is almost impossible to preserve full functionality given the space restraints of an expansion card.

This would cause a couple issues:

  • The expansion cards don’t just serve to allow you to add functionality, they also protect the USB-C ports built into the mainboard. They sort of act as a sacrificial part so you can replace the expansion card if the port gets damaged rather than damage the mainboard.
  • It would require a chassis and board redesign, going against Framework’s principle of upgradability.

Take a look at the Framework Laptop 16! It was recently announced and will be launching sometime soon featuring 6x expansion card slots.

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Not to mention that the current 13" Framework laptops use up all of their PCIe lanes to allow all four ports to be thunderbolt 4, plus give lanes to the storage, so there aren’t any left for more ports.

+1 preferably a colored one…

I would like a fanless option that just has a lower running frequency or throttles it when it gets to hot.

I agree with other posts that having multiple ports or features on an expansion card would be nice; the sd card reader could add a usb port or add 2 usb a connectors per card.

256GB of RAM just as AMD 7040 CPU can support it.