I’m sure Framework doesn’t have the resources to develop their own battery, so it’s not likely going to happen until there are mass-produced batteries available from a third-party company. Companies like Samsung and others who develop their own batteries (all I’ve heard of are “breakthroughs” and “prototypes” which could mean a retail product is close…but more likely it’s still a ways off) are highly likely to put them in their own devices before making them widely available to others.
So I suspect it will be at least a few years, maybe more, before there is any chance of a solid-state (I’d say they should be called “solid electrolyte”) batteries are available in Framework products.
But who knows. Maybe companies are closer than it seems and they will start to be widely available in the next year or two. Would be pretty cool. Hopefully they are actually less impactful to produce in terms of toxic byproducts and toxic products inside them, as well as being more energy dense. Lithium batteries helped drive a bit of a tech revolution. Let’s hope the next big battery technology will actually reduce some of the negatives of lithium cells.
Yeah for sure framework can’t develope their own. But like you said maybe from Samsung or similair company.
But because other companies like Apple are roumored to use a solid state battery in end of 2024, maybe it will be possible in ~2026 for other companies to buy, like framework.
I mean it would be nice to see a 99Wh 16" version or 71wh 13" version.
there are some major drawbacks for solid states at the moment. One of the biggest concerns is that the batteries can form dendrites on the outside which will short circuit any nearby components, especially in a laptop. If you want to build a casing for the battery to protect from that, now your talking about more girth and weight of the battery. It’ll be a decade at least before solid state battery becomes a thing, if at all.
Assuming the hype is true (and we all know what happens when you assume…), then it’s feasible the size limitations and shipping limitations in general may some day be lifted. I think it’s the fire risk of lithium batteries that generally led to the size restrictions for shipping or for being brought onto a plane. If solid-state/solid electrolyte batteries really do eliminate the fire risk, maybe there is hope that this size restriction may lift for this battery type. Probably not, but maybe, one day.
In general, I’m cautiously hopeful, but overall mostly skeptical that the rumors and hyped up stories of “prototypes” and “breakthroughs” are going to lead to widespread use any time soon. We’ll see.
I don’t think it will be anytime soon, that airlines increase this limit. They will be sceptical and uninformed. Second reason is, it is probably not really visible or it would be a huge expense to test, if devices have liquid or solid battery. It is not visible. So liquid batteries would have tonnearly completly dissapear to making them uplift this limit. So i think THAT will take 15-20 Years from now. Also because 100Wh are generally not that little actually and you can see on Apples notebooks, that it could last very long, when the hardware would be energyefficient enough (im curious how good the 7040 amd will be).
About the “breakthrough”:
There is one major different: Electrical cars. There were never ever such a financial interest in having better batteries, than know. Bevore electrical car were a (political/society-) thing, there was just not the same interest in it. Now there are several companies with investments of double-digit billions in electrical cars.
There were always only things like “sientists had a breakthorugh in…”. Now we have “In Year 202x mass production will start”. And that is not said from one unknown startup, it’s said from several big automobil-manufactor. Like Toyota who said, they will begin mass production in 2028 for it’s cars.
But it depends on how you ask, because some of the big companies have their own battery-developement and others are investing in less kown battery-companies and also others are just making contratcs with existing big companies like BMW is said to do with samsung batteries.
So that’s why there are different numbers in when solid state batteries are ready. but all of them says, that in 10 years mass production will be there. some of them earlier, some of them not.
It’s now a different story, than 10 years before. Now Car-industry is involved and that means, there is probably a market of triple-digitc (or even more) billions of interests.
If the energy density goes way up, why not simply split the battery in half and install 2x 99Wh? And if there are travel restrictions, simply remove one of them for the duration (or take them with you in a secure container)?
The batteries are user-exchangeable parts, so third party offerings are bound to happen. No need for Framework to spend precious resources on at this time.
That would need a battery, which is swappable from outside of the case without opening it up. so it would need a completly different design of the whole laptop and that only for a very small fraction of people (wehre i am also in), who want’s to have more than 99Wh? I dont think this will happen.
But the idea is good. But so then why no one did it already on other laptops, like gaminglaptops?
But i would like to have hot-swappable batteries anyway on the framework laptop. But that’s a different story. Then you could just buy an additional one and change it, if the first one is low. But i dont think a company will risk, that their laptop not can be taken with on an airplane, even if the do that thing with splitting. Otherwise they couls offer a swappable battery and you can buy 2 of them.
I would also love that. Better and more efficient than powerbanks, where you have to charge a battery with another battery (this is actually quite stupid)
Removable batteries used to be the norm. It’s only in recent years that this has changed. My previous Dell Laptop at work had an exchangeable battery, and my ancient HP ProBook was offered with an add-on battery pack. I don’t know the travel restrictions, are they per device, per battery, per passenger or what? They’re arbitrary anyway, and nobody can check the actual battery capacity on check-in to boot.
I know, i had one too. But i just want to say: It is, how it is for the moment in the Framework-Laptops. And i’m not sure if they would change that very soon, because they already did it in this way and if they would change it now, it would probably be quite difficult to not change the PCB-size (and that’s sth that for sure will not happen because of the upgradeabiltiy). Because an exchangeable battery needs a case which makes the battery bigger and so you would need more space, but there is not more. So only option is to make the laptop bigger in height or make the PCB smaller.
But anyway: The topic was about solid state battery, not exchangeable batteries That’s another story.
And about airplanes: It varies on different airlines, but it is just about one battypack i think. But for sure there will be somewhere a rule, that you cant take 10 100Wh battery with you.
But one thing is clear: No laptop-seller will risk to loose potential buyers, because they try to make their device over 100wh only because of a small fraction who want’s that. They will maybe offer exchangeable batteries but never they will “play games” with airlines by splitting their battery and so on.
I agree that it will be a long time, if it ever changes at all. It was just something that occurred to me. Basically, I just think it would be nice if these batteries truly did reduce the fire risk. Even if the rules don’t technically change, it would be nice to at least start moving away from all this talk about battery fires.
That’s part of the problem. The rules aren’t always clear. I think the main one is that lithium batteries of 100WH or larger cannot be transported by plane, and I’m not sure if any lithium batteries are allowed to be “checked” on a plane or shipped via air cargo, at least by the likes of UPS and FedEx. And the ambiguity of the rules is part of the problem.
For shipping, unfortunately even the shippers are a bit confused about all the rules. I once tried to give away a digital camera to someone who needed one. They happened to live in the UK (I live in the US). I tried to ship the camera via UPS and I probably spent a half hour or more at the desk with them looking through the rules and consulting others in the store before ultimately just saying they wouldn’t ship it if it had a lithium battery because they couldn’t be sure how to do it properly with all the additional rules about international paperwork and customs stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it couldn’t have been shipped, but just that the rules are clearly a mystery, even to some of the people working with this stuff.
I wish that trend would return, including for cell phones. A replaceable battery does, potentially, add some weight and bulk, which I’m mostly okay with if it means the battery is easily removable and swappable. But manufacturers seemed all too willing to jump on the bandwagon of ever thinner and “sleeker” devices. Likely in part because it did drive sales, but also because I’m sure they are more than happy to sell you a new device when the battery dies in yours.
I could live with a slightly thicker, plastic body laptop if it has a battery that can pop out and swap in seconds. Just so long as the clips aren’t like the ones on my old work-issued Dell where the latches moved relatively easily and were NOT spring loaded, so every once in a while, when you picked up the laptop the battery would just kinda, stay on the desk and the laptop would shut off, lol.
For now, I’ll happily make do with a Framework where the battery is at least relatively easy to access, isn’t glued in, and replacements are available.
As for Solid Electrolyte batteries, I doubt they will be available and cost effective for a company like framework for some time. Even if a company like Porsche or BMW manages to get one for their EVs.
My 13th Gen Framework 13 is acceptable on battery life. It is about the same level as my Elitebook 840 G7 which is also a good laptop but does not get high marks on repairability. I am not sure that I care about the specific chemistry of the battery, solid state or otherwise, but a bit more capacity would be pretty awesome. I have the 61Whr battery and a little tweaking of my system when on battery yields me satisfactory results. A 71Whr battery would mean that with my work loads, using Linux, I would easily get 10 hours of battery life.
I would also like to see, what your workload is, if you could last 10h with 71Wh battery.
Linux is fine, but im not using linux and most other users also dont use it. Even if it’s more used in the framework community. But framework laptop is really not known for good battery life.
Notebookcheck measure 1 hour and 20 min more batterylife from 12th gen to 13th gen. This is huge compared to the model before, but it is just average compared to others.
And it has to be said that the huawei matebook x pro 2023 uses a much higher resolution and 50% higher refreshrate and is even slightly bigger and uses nearly same battery capacity (60Wh).
This is sth i want to see from a framework laptop.
@RandomRanger You are correct. That is about what my average draw is when doing basic office-type work. That includes running Outlook, several chat clients an instance of Firefox and Chromium as well as doing some RDP into other systems. If I am using my Framework for video editing or other more demanding tasks, I probably get closer to 4 hours but I can’t say I have tested it to that extent. I have run the laptop on battery until I was done editing (a 2hr long video) and plugged it back in when I initiated the rendering. It probably took me 3 or 4 hours to edit the video and I still had at least 10% or more of battery life left as I wasn’t notified it was getting low.
@Platos you are correct that more battery life would be preferred. As an Ultrabook style of machine something like 10 hours would be great. The Huawei MateBook X Pro looks like a great machine but it wouldn’t work for me. The modularity of the Framework is really the top selling feature… along with the repairability factor. It does bring attention to the fact that this machine, with similar specs, has longer battery life but I haven’t ever experienced a machine that gave me the battery life as advertised. I do run Linux so that is likely the reason and also the work loads I push my machine might also be higher than most. My Framework has 64GB of RAM and I have read that more memory means more power usage but I’m sure that is one of those YMMV situations. To say this machine draws about 7W average would be pretty accurate. Truly, I am quite happy with this machine.
Yeah, at the end framework laptop has just avg battery life now with the new 13th gen. That’s a fact. Before it was horrible, now its average. Your results are fine for you, but it’s your specific usecase and doesnt matter at all.
You can read tests and there its clearly showing, that the frameworklaptop has not great battery life. There are many other with same battery-size and similair specs and they have just higher batterylife. And in the end, customers dont care if some other laptops uses bigger battery. it’s not unfair to compare a 13" laptop with a 60wh battery with another 13" laptop, which has (lets say) a 70wh battery. Because that’s the point, it uses bigger battery and framework should it too. Thats frameworks fault to not use bigger batteries.
On the 16" they should use a bigger battery and also on the 13" they should. But they can’t, because i guess it has no free space ??
So and that’s where solid state batteries comes in. With it it could be easily possible to use a 99wh in the 16" and a 71wh in the 13". That would result in good batterylife.
I feel like the amount of units Framework ships is still small enough to scale into solid state early on…maybe in partnership with a company like Prieto Battery? Cuz PB is already nearing production as a supplier of batteries for Black & Decker.
Yeah, with all the safety concerns with fires, expensive repairs, and general harm to the public, solid state would help alleviate some of the battery problems and dangers. Still never going to be implemented anytime soon. Most electric car manufacturers are known for being lemons. They are certainly not going to play with experimental stuff until they have the basics down. Phones and laptops will be the same. No one wants to deal with lawsuits and bad publicity. Especially if they are investing a lot of time and money into it.
That’s another story.