It would be great if it was possible to remove one or both of the speakers to add a bigger battery as an option.
If you plan on using the laptop for work, longer battery life is probably more important than stereo speakers as they will probably only be used for conference calls and watching informative videos. For both of these cases one mono speaker is sufficient.
I personally never use the laptop speakers and usually use headphones or external speakers. Therefore I would prefer to remove the speakers entirely to get a big bump in battery life. The compromise of not being able to provide sound to multiple people to me is worth making, considering how often longer battery life will help me and how rarely missing speakers will hinder me.
Enabling both options is probably not possible because it would mean you would have to provide 3 different batteries, which is not economical considering how little users will actually use the different sizes. Therefore a decision needs to be made whether 1 speaker is necessary or battery life is more important. Here’s a short list of reasons why you might chose one over another:
Pros/Cons for 1 Speaker
very useful in case you need quick audio, especially without earbuds on hand
the actual difference in battery life might only be minimal compared to stereo speakers
Pros/Cons for no speaker
a (hopefully) big improvement to battery life
dependency on external audio solutions
(I might update the Pros/Cons with more arguments if this post actually becomes relevant.)
Also here’s a poll to see the general tendency and if there is an actual demand for this:
No speaker large battery
Mono speaker bigger battery
Stereo speakers no changes/good as it is
0voters
For most people stereo speakers might be the go to option, but increasing the battery life is a nice option to have.
My personal preference is, as stated before, no speaker at all, because I am a programmer and wannabe-audiophile. That’s why I would opt for the additional battery life and instead use the potential High Fidelity Audio Expansion Card with headphones I always carry around anyways, as they should produce far superior audio quality.
I adore this idea (I can’t remember the last time I used my laptop speakers on purpose, as opposed to random error noises or pop-up ads when I forgot to turn the volume down), but worry that it might be difficult due to how the chassis of the Framework laptop narrows in the lower corners. You’d have to either somehow chain together two smaller and shallower batteries in each corner, or entirely replace the laptop’s lower chassis with a third-party alternative.
(the latter would complete the Framework’s conversion from product to marketplace and might meet other needs expressed in the forum like magnesium alloy frame, less generic styling, or potentially even an additional two expansion slots if the internals can get worked out, but would be a substantial proposition. Framework would have to release their overall schematics, and an experienced manufacturer or maker would have to put in significant development work getting the build quality better than some homespun Thingiverse POS.)
Sorry to revive a dead thread, but now that the marketplace is up, the idea of paying for a bigger (99 Wh? ;D) battery that takes the space of the speakers (or better, being able to spec one that way from new) is really, really, inticing, especially with some of the exotic expansion cards being worked on that could measurably eat into battery life. I love the endless possibilities this laptop opens up, and I love even more that I can be the one who is responsible for the execution of those ideas, and the independence, flexibility, speed, and agility that provides in a poweruser workflow, but this is almost certainly an idea that will require the help and cooperation of the @Framework team, and while they are awesome at getting their customers what they want and need, it won’t make sense for them to put the time and effort of developing this into their dense backlog unless there’s a ton of community desire behind it. I’m talking like, more desire than for AMD mainboards or matte screens, but I’d argue this might have a more substantial impact on daily usability than either of those things.
All that having been said, what do you guys think?
Do you all like the idea of a bigger battery as much as I do?
Can we get more support behind this than matte screens?
Please?
or maybe much smaller, cellphone-sized stereo speakers in the original speaker location, with larger battery. this laptop is no xps 15, we’re not buying it for the audio quality, but ‘barely useable audio’ would still be good enough.
Might need the extended battery to screw into the smaller speaker, to hold everything together.
Obviously the framework team is much brighter than we are, but I’d think that’d add too much additional required R&D, and that for this purpose you could safely assume that anyone willing to make that trade-off would want to take it as far as possible, but ultimately I’d be happy with whatever they came up with if they decided to pursue this.
I would generally prefer if the speakers were moved up by the keyboard to fit a larger battery. I think it’s the best of both worlds. But yeah, honestly framework’s most annoying problem for me (other than the annoying hinges) is the battery life. About the speakers, it would be way better to listen to them if they were put up by the keyboard as well. I have a toshiba laptop that does just this, and I vastly prefer it.
This would be great. Some rough pixel measurement math based on this gives me 15% more battery space. Doesn’t necessarily mean that would work out depending on whether they can find cells the right size to utilize it but if so that is major.
hmm I don’t see it, for a 10-20% capacity increase, I would see it more practical to make an external battery pack that you can plug and increase the capacity or something like that…
