How best to manage unexpectedly fast battery degradation

Framework Laptop 16
1

Hello all,
Today, I happened to check on the battery health of my Framework Laptop 16, and noticed that it was only 87% (i.e. last full charge was 87% of reported designed capacity) according to KDE info centre. Although I expected some degradation of the battery, I did not expect this much after only 145 cycles (the Framework Marketplace listing for the battery states that “Battery typically retains 80% capacity after 1,000 cycles of use.” so I am somewhat concerned about the health of my own battery)

I use the laptop as my primary device, and my use results in some conditions that are less-than-optimal for the battery (deep discharges of the battery, charging to full and leaving the system plugged in for extended periods, semi-frequent high load on the battery due to accidentally knocking my charger loose while gaming on the dgpu, as well as very occasionally finding my system overheated due to it powering on in my bag during my commute, and one time where the cardboard box I rested it on while running VR games deforming under it and obstructing the lower fan intakes). Additionally, there was a period of 3 weeks which started 3 weeks after I got the system (and therefore ended 6 weeks after I got the system) where I did not use it or charge it due to failure of the dgpu leaving the system unbootable while waiting for a replacement dgpu.

I run the system as a dual-boot, with Windows 11 on a M.2 2230 SSD and Fedora 40 (specifically the KDE spin, recently upgraded from 39) on a M.2 2280 SSD. Fedora is my primary operating system, with Windows 11 being reserved for a few workloads that I was unable to get working on Linux in a reasonable amount of time. Although I use the KDE spin, I use swaywm instead of KDE itself (I use the KDE spin because I prefer the KDE applications to their equivalents).

Finally, when I first got the system (I was in batch 6, so it would have been early April iirc), I noticed that the battery charged to more than its designed capacity (although I cannot remember exactly how much more, it was either ~107% or ~115% charge according to i3status). I changed i3status to report charge level as a percentage of the last full charge, since having a charge level greater than 100% reported wasnt my preferred behaviour.

upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT1 outputs the following:

  native-path:          BAT1
  vendor:               NVT
  model:                FRANDBA
  serial:               041F
  power supply:         yes
  updated:              Sat 12 Oct 2024 17:24:24 BST (19 seconds ago)
  has history:          yes
  has statistics:       yes
  battery
    present:             yes
    rechargeable:        yes
    state:               fully-charged
    warning-level:       none
    energy:              73.6538 Wh
    energy-empty:        0 Wh
    energy-full:         73.6848 Wh
    energy-full-design:  85.0007 Wh
    energy-rate:         0 W
    voltage:             17.48 V
    charge-cycles:       145
    percentage:          99%
    capacity:            86.6873%
    technology:          lithium-ion
    icon-name:          'battery-full-charged-symbolic'

My question now is whether my battery is degrading significantly faster than expected due to a defect of the battery (or another piece of the system hardware) or if it is just due to my very poor battery hygiene (now that I think about it, I really have put the battery through a lot).

If it happens to be the former should I contact Framework support?
If it happens to be the latter, how could I better manage my battery health? (for starters, I am going to check to see if there is a maximum charge limit option in the firmware settings right now).

2

Did you preform calibration before getting 87%?
Without that, it can be very inaccurate. And at best it’s still only an estimation. Capacity varies with draw / how fast it’s drained & temperature.

Perhaps a short right-angle extension cable amazon.com/dp/B0CZHT4129
Using of a short extension is better than just a right-angle built into a single longer cable because if the longer cable is pulled accidentally, it will just pull out at the connection to the short extension. Rather than yanking your laptop.

Might it have been pressure on the screen clicking the touchpad or pressing a key, triggering wake up? If I recall, there is a thread on that, and instructions on how to block wakeup when the screen is closed.

1 Like
3

How large a full charge is does depend on the battery’s health, however it also depends on other factors such as the temperature of the battery. Furthermore the reported numbers are estimates that can be several percent off.

Secondly, batteries typically lose the first 10% capacity pretty quickly and then the degradation slows down dramatically.

87% after 145 cycles isn’t great, but it’s also not outside of the range that I’d expect.

1 Like
5

i looked into it and there is a way to limit charge to a percentage. also thinking back the battery abuse probably was the main cause of the degradation

1 Like
6

the knocking the charger loose bit is mainly disconnecting the cable from the power adapter, not the cable from the laptop.

also extension cables arent exactly permitted in the type-c spec (due to the complexities that would have come from permitting them) and i try and minimise the size of my illegal usb cable collection. i can see their usefulness if you make sure they work for your devices, but its more a problem of me needing to move my laptop a lot so at my desk my cable ends up in a less-than-optimal location than a problem of needing a right-angle adapter.

7

i dont really have time for a proper calibration at the moment due to the amount of life things i have to do right now, but i will probably look into doing one at some point

1 Like