Swollen Battery <1yr in, How to address?

Ah. Of course.
Okay so line 1 of my reply was a silly misunderstanding on my part.
Line 2 still more or less applies, but you appear to know more about it than me.

Kinda, it should work but is broken on the amd frameworks, works fine on the intel ones and would work fine on amd if the ec code for that gets fixed.

But that’s pretty off topic here

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Yes. But it’s much easier for a puffed bat to puncture. Especially if screwed into a laptop with nowhere to expand.

I’m honestly not even comfortable with my own level of safety on this thing right now, I’m only using it out of necessity. A puffed battery is more dangerous than a non puffed battery.

That’s the important bit

Say someone kicks my laptop bag. Non puffed battery? Nothing happens, maybe the lid corners bend like is common on the framework. But a puffed battery and it bursts and starts a fire. It’s the incidentals which make it dangerous.

You may be arguing with the wrong guy here, I never said you should leave it in the laptop.

Puffed battery doesn’t work in a laptop cause it doesn’t fit anymore, if you force it to fit you introduce mechanical damage which is very bad with lithium batteries.

Precisely.

A puffed up battery is one quite small step away from a catastrophic and dangerous failure mode.

It’s already failed and the fact that it’s puffed up and not burst into flames means that the absolute last line of defence is the thin outer membrane containing the pressure.

Let’s not forget there are already a number of safety measures that have failed in order to get to this point, none of which were the fault or cause of the person operating the laptop (unless they are literally smashing it with hammers or trying to fold it into quarters).

Laptop batteries, as I’m certain every single OEM is aware, will quite often be used in a device that rarely leaves a docking station or is away from being charged. 100% charge on a modern Li-Ion is not 100%, just the same as 0% is not literally 0%. There are margins for safety in both directions. There is over-charge protection, short-circuit protection, over-temp protection, over-current protection, physical protections in terms of space around the battery and robust construction that resists puncture and other damage.

Batteries that turn into “spicy pillows” are faulty and dangerous and should be treated with utmost caution - removed from any inside area as a first step.

Imo these puff up over time. So if you notice just outside warranty I’d be trying my luck with support. This just seems like a defect.

You can count me as number three instead then. :grinning:

I have an 11 month old AMD Framework 13 with a 61wh battery. The touchpad clicker stopped working a few weeks ago. Earlier this week I ruled out problems with the input cover. Removing the battery fixed the problem. The replacement is supposed to be delivered tomorrow.

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Mine was also the 61Wh.

So this is making me think further that there is something amiss with the 61Wh battery, or the charging system, or SOMETHING.

I have, for many years now, treated every laptop like this (nearly constantly charging). Out of those, I had one other that puffed: a Dell, I believe the XPS 13, and that was after a number of years of usage. At least 3, but probably 5 or more. I have had a couple with reduced capacity after that amount of time.

I have never, not once, had a laptop battery puff up less than a year in. I recognize that the charging conditions aren’t ideal, and am prepared to replace the battery every 3 years or whatever… but every 10 months?

So when it seemed to be just me, it may have just been me being unlucky. That no longer seems to be the case.

It’s the kind of thing you only find out after the time elapses. Framework would likely only be finding out about it now as well.

It might be something, could also just be a few outliers, they did sell a lot of the ryzen 7 model so there should be quite a lot of the 61wh batteries out there. Definitely keeping an eye on it though.

Mine’s the 13th gen Intel i7, which also had 61Wh as an option.

Quite right; I completely understand. I’m still a fan of Framework – we now have 2 Framework 13s in our family and are likely to have more in the future – but also hope they give attention to this issue. One comment here suggested maybe they were over-driving the battery to get up to 61Wh; I’m not equipped to evaluate that but still, we seem to have, at minimum, a bad batch.

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It’s much more than “you don’t notice”. cylindrical cells are objectively better in terms of longevity as swelling causes delamination and cylindrical cells won’t swell.

A brief explanation about delamination is that for a pouch cell, when repeatedly charged at high %, gas builds up within the cell and the cell degrades at the same time. The gas deforms the cell, causing the anode, cathode and the electrolyte not able to contact firmly, causing a lower surface area available for chemical reaction, which leads to lower total charge and higher internal resistance that adds up on top of normal performance degradation by normal usage. For a cylindrical cell when repeatedly charged at high %, gas builds up within the cell and the cell degrades at the same time. The gas is contained by the metal casing, no deformation and no delamination, the surface area available for chemical reaction remains the same, the performance degradation is only due to normal aging.

The venting valve has a higher pressure rating which only trips(physically disconnect the electrode within the cell, opening the circuit) when the battery is overcharged or overheated. The cylinder keeps the gas contained when the battery is in normal use throughout its lifespan

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What’s the spec of the battery pack on your previous laptops? Are they cylindrical or pouch? Are they 4.2V or 4.45V when fully charged? If it’s the former case, there’s your answer. Cylindrical cells last longer than pouch cells and 4.2V cells last longer than 4.45V cells. Premature degradation of laptop battery seems already became a common phenomenon nowadays. I already seen four cases of this on the laptops of my colleagues, regardless of laptop brand and model, with one case of 10% capacity loss over 4 months. What’s in common is that they all use battery pack composed by pouch cells, and they all have a very high limited charging voltage.

I now want to try this; I imagine that it doesn’t charge, but may keep it from discharging (as fast at least)

I tried using USB-A and 5V3A USBC PD and it draws 0.02A which is effectively zero, the exception is kickstarting mentioned here

You did link the pre fix table, though 5v still needs kickstarting even after the fix for the rest of the pd stuff.

After the BIOS update 9V2A PD works but 5V3A PD still won’t work, at least without kickstarting.
Might because mine is AMD ryzen while OP’s is 13gen intel