Just a quick PSA to check your battery. I ordered a 61Wh in June 2023, and today my input cover was bulging so I checked under and it’s very swollen. I’m probably out of warranty so have to eat a replacement, but you may not be!
Interestingly, I had my Batch 6 55Wh battery from December 2021 to June 2023 (and a little longer because I waited for the 11th gen firmware update to drop before replacing the bat), so this one actually lasted half the daily use of my original (which never puffed).
Also, I wanted to post this in the laptop 13 discussion, but no combination of tags would let me post there. /shrug (forum issue was fixed day after posting)
We have noticed that behavior with batteries of our RC planes.
After a longer analysis, we identified charge level and exposed temperature to be the culprit.
In short, if you charge your batter in house at 25⁰C to 100%, and go out and leave it in your car where the temperature drops a lot, the “excess” power has to go somewhere because the cell chemistry changes with temperature.
The excess power, because depending on the temperature, the battery can hold more (hot) or less (cold) charge. The Temperature has an essential impact on the internal resistance of the batter pack.
What I do when on the move in Winter, is to charge the battery max 90%. In summer I tend to go to 100%. That’ll do.
I had written down all what I learned regarding the batteries (out of long RC forum discussions) here: RC Batteries FAQ if you’re interested. Because what is written on the battery is very often not reality.
Different battery chemistry (you’re likely flying lipo vs laptop’s li-ion), which means they react differently to conditions. In any event, I treat my laptop pretty well and it only ever gets used or left to sit in room temperature.
I also set it to 60% limit in bios when I know I’ll be using it docked for an extended period, but I put it back to 100% when (like now) I know I need to take it and have a work day of battery life.
I’m sure you know that the capacity report is pretty inaccurate unless taken in specific conditions (which I no longer feel safe to set up), so that’s what was on my tlp report at 99% charge after booting up.
Usage pattern varies between leaving it at a limit of 60% and plugged in and a limit of 100% and using the full battery over 8h before charging overnight.
This is probably one of the first 61Wh bats framework made given that I preordered the day of their early (erroneous) announcement and preorder open, so maybe it was a bad batch.
I have a 61wh battery in a project of mine, and swelling is a real concern, which is actually quiet common in general. However, I limit the charge capacity to 60% because I don’t want to exacerbate swelling.
The change of temperature affecting swelling really makes a lot of sense. This stuff doesn’t just apply to Framework batteries, but batteries in general.
Still really unfortunate Be_Far. I wonder what your ambient temperature is normally?
I live in Texas, so pretty sweaty outside, but I’ve never used it nor left it in that weather/in a hot car etc. room temp at 68-70 degrees?
I’m out of the country right now (which means I have to order a battery rather than swapping back to the 51 ugh), but temps are very mild here at the moment so I have no idea what brought this on.
Most of my science experiments end with the smell of burning plastic and a ring of soot that won’t come out of the driveway for a few rainstorms… I need this laptop for school haha
Well. Happened to me sometimes too when an airplane crashes and the battery has a short.
Usually, if you’re fast enough to rip the battery out of the plane you can save the rest. But sometimes, it just burns. I had some warbirds burning like that. The irony though
Update, I replaced the battery at the beginning of last week (it shipped in record time!), and the old battery is being properly recycled. Here’s hoping this one lasts more than a year.
@Adrian_Joachim as an indicator of how inaccurate the battery stats are, tlp-stat shows my current capacity as 101.1% after 1 cycle (it’s been 6+ cycles so far…)
