If the expansion cards are causing the battery drainage during sleep, why not have a small physical hardware switch to disconnect the battery? (I’m imagining a small toggle on the bottom of the FW13 chassis that’s similar but maybe slightly more robust than the mic/camera shutters.) That way every time the laptop goes to sleep you can disconnect the battery and preserve charge.
It’s a small extra step when turning the computer on again but if it preserves that 20% battery loss that I get overnight, it would totally be worth it.
Also if you have the laptop plugged in for long periods, instead of going into the BIOS to disconnect the battery, you can just toggle the hardware switch to preserve battery health.
Note that you can essentially do this on most distros by mapping the power button to Shut down, which allows the system to safely shut down, vs the instant power off that could cause a lot of problems if you disconnect the battery.
I do have the power button set to shut down already but I was imagining putting the laptop to sleep or shut down before disconnecting the battery… would that still cause issues? Even if on AC? I don’t like having my laptop on AC overnight with the battery connected but it’s the only way to have a fully charged laptop when I leave in the morning… even though I’m sacrificing the battery’s health in the process.
Sorry if this is a stupid suggestion… this isn’t my field (my background is in protein modelling, not computer engineering); I just wanted a solution to the battery drain issue because even when the system is fully shut down, the battery still drains overnight.
this is not a stupid suggestion. A separate hardware switch for the battery is a good idea. There’s a reason why other machines come with hardware switches for the camera and mic. Presenting a software solution doesn’t mean anything if the OS is compromised. There’s more use cases than just battery drain.
If the system is shut down (in S5 state, when the power button LED is off), there should be essentially zero battery drain overnight. If you leave it for weeks/months, you could start to see some drain from battery self discharge. If you are seeing 20% drain overnight, it sounds like the system is in suspend (power button breathing) instead of shut down.
I think a physical switch could be useful as long as you could disconnect the battery while the laptop is plugged in and it doesn’t mess with anything. I know I do worry more about battery health with my FW16 than I have with any of my other laptops. I would love to use it just plugged in when I use it most of the time and connect the battery before I unplug it to move rooms, or to top off the battery before a flight. The BIOS features for battery charge are nice but I like using Framework Control for if I’m using my laptop and then need to top it off while I’m still using it.
Yes, I am well aware of the differences between S3 and S5 state.
I get between 20-22% drainage in 12hrs overnight for S3 and anywhere from 7-10% for S5 (where the power button is completely off and it’s just overnight). I did have it fully charged + shut down when I was away for a week and it was dead when I returned so I’m skeptical that the drainage is a simple linear progression. (Note: I’ve had this FW13 since 2021 and I upgraded the battery in 2023 so maybe age has something to do with the results that I’m getting but I know I’m not the only one.)
I still think that a hardware switch would be useful and am curious to know if (or why not) that is actually feasible.
7-10% overnight when the machine is truly off is a lot.
Either there is a phantom device sucking power when the machine is truly off or the battery itself is just loosing its own charge internally.
As an experiment. Charge the battery to 80-100%, write down the % and shut it down. Loosen the keyboard cover and physically disconnect the battery. Go to sleep (or whatever is done overnight) in the morning. Plug the battery back in and power up the laptop. See if the % stayed really close to the same or dropped again. If it dropped; it’s the physicial battery pack.
If the pack is still at the same state of charge something is not turning off and leaching power…
3 different things in this topic, here’s my understanding
Power button. the pressing it turns on the laptop if it’s off. In system settings you can set it to power off when pressed(not hold). Pressing and holding the power button will force shutdown the computer(might cause unsaved data loss)
Physical battery switch. The battery is connected to the mainboard with four pins: VCC, SDA, SCL and GND. You can technically use a switch but disconnecting ony VCC may confuse the EC and/or the BMS, causing issues. The “battery disconnect” in BIOS doesn’t trigger any physical switch, in fact, it sends a “shutdown” signal to the BMS, turning the battery off. You can test it by removing the battery and measuring the voltage using a multimeter. If you don’t use “battery disconnect” you’ll measure it’s voltage accurately. If you “battery disconnect” you’ll get 0V
Standby drain. It may be caused by BIOS EC not shutting off after shutting down. In this case, reset your BIOS. It can also be the result of weird expansion port connection, as shown here.
So I did your experiment (shutting down, disconnecting the battery and leaving it overnight) and the battery only drained by 1%. It’s only one sample size so that 1% could be negligible.
How complex is this signal? Is it something that could be easily “spoofed” by some small chip or even just a button or switch or does it require some proper signaling? If it’s just pulling some lane high or low, then maybe such a switch could be fairly easily retrofitted.
It is not, you have to actually talk to the battery and ask it nicely.
I mean you could theoretically just throw a short over the power pin which would also cause it to disconnect but that would be kinda hard on the battery and abusing safety features for convenience is usually not the best of ideas. It also might interpret that as a bigger fault and permanently lock you out at some point.
