5v3a is resistor pd so that makes kinda sense, I hope they do fix that eventually though.
Afaik it works on intel but still borked on amd, only got an amd one so can only test that.
I just want to mention here that one of my last laptops with a swollen battery - I noticed it when the laptop no longer closed properly because the battery was pressing on the keyboard from the inside - caused a hectic reaction from support: I was given a dangerous goods warning, an explosion-safe box was sent immediately via UPS and I had to send the laptop back to this company because of the risk of explosion. I have now received a replacement device.
My experience: Swollen batteries are a sign of poor mediocre quality. Can happen, but shouldn’t because of the risk of severe damage to customers.
IF a battery is swollen, don’t charge it anymore, let the energy go out and replace is as soon as possible. Contact the support and keep in mind, it can start a fire by an explosion! This risk is well known and good companies handle that danger well and responsible.
You can find enough information about that in the internet, here is just one article how to deal with it: Beware the Bulging Battery! (And What to Do If Yours Expands) | Computer Hardware
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When docked, do you have the lid closed too? The intake fan is UNDER the computer to draw in air and then it EXHAUSTS heat in the gap between the monitor and the function keys at the top. Excessive heat = battery go boom.
This is the exhaust by the screen hinge.
You cannot simply keep the laptop closed and run it - even if you have a fan blowing underneath it. The heat has no where to dissipate.
But this is all only true if you have your lid closed. Also makes me wonder if you needed a fan while running your dock if the lid was open if it was thermal related.
That linear exhaust flow only looks correct because the bezel is off. Get your own fw13 out and you’ll notice it’s 100% meant to exhaust with lid open only because hot air rises.
Vs
The bezel completely occludes the linear idea of an exhaust vent. So where would it go if it’s closed off? Let’s look at the bottom.
But again: hot air rises
So let’s compare the actual flow when you combine hot air rises with the lid open and the angle created for flow via screen lid open:
This is the angle seen at a typical 90 degree hinge.
You’ll notice that as the lid opens up more and more, the bottom angle closes up more and more leading to a upwards angular flow. Let me prove it to you with the last photo using full open hinge.
At full open hinge, there’s 0.0001% of air to dissipate downwards.
In my last photo, if you look at your own fw13, you’ll notice in the keyboard gap per my original photo:
There are even angular upwards facing vents with a bottom occlusive ramp between the screen itself and the bezel combined.
Hot air rises.
This laptop reminds me of the chromebopk pixel 2013 because of this engineering. Super cool but definitely not dockable closed.
Edit img for clarity:
I am not referring to the back slits as the fan exhaust.
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Shouldn’t there be a thermal throttling going on here? I believe at least the CPU would automatically throttle down. Shouldn’t the battery also?
Also there is a difference between a laptop being closed and 99% idle (a bit of email and web surfing) vs 99% in use (AI workloads, heavy gaming, etc). The latter takes a lot more power and produces a lot more heat.
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Eh, not exactly. Lot of variables, but we can do a simple physics pov.
I would love to see FW do a thermal analysis on lid closed + dock set up.
So an intro physics course would say that energy in must equal energy out or there is a net build up.
Since we do not have the actual values or variables, we can only intuitively assume what the formula might look like.
Based on my image analysis, and how they engineered the product to work with the lid open to dissipate heat - we can assume there is going to be a net positive energy staying inside the system vs leaving it.
So, let’s say the system makes 50 units of heat, so why is the net result actually 40 when it’s actually closer to 25 with the lid open?
And let’s say 40 is still hot - but not enough to trigger throttling (if throttling actually exists on linux if that’s what you’re using.)
So it turns out - there is about 10 units of heat being dissipated through the aluminum chassis - a great conductor of heat.
So this might have been compensating for what would have been a battery disaster in a few months if that to an entire year.
Second big factor would be linux based: the lack of proper drivers and of the such for idle, sleep, hibernate, suspend on linux leads to consistent power drain and can lead to the battery just holding onto more heat than it should.
So it brings me back to my original question: Are you using the fw 13 with the lid closed docked?
I can see many potential issues with this if the bezel remains on for long periods of time. The aluminum can only take so much heat before it maxes out and is then reliant on the environmental gradient + air flowing over the laptop’s chasis to remove heat - which is a terrible heat solution regardless. And when the chassis maxes out - you can think of it as you having had pre-heated your oven to 350F. If it couldn’t remove heat at all - it would just keep going up and up.
This is why even though you can be doing light work - given enough time with heat not leaving the system - you can still get a well pre-heated oven going on.
Yes.
When there aren’t other forces dominating. And when the warm air is in a space where cooler air can press in on it.
You do need to consider that air is being forced out, and in, under significant pressure. This changes the dynamics. The pressure differential created by the fans far, far outweigh the buoyancy of warm air vs room temperature air. Where the air will go will be governed by the path offered to it. As long as the pressure differential is high, pressurized flow is the dominating force. Once it reaches an open space, then the buoyancy of warm air will start to outweigh the force of the air stream.
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yup! It’s still a net retention though if I had to guess. Or I guess a higher temp equilibrium than would otherwise be expected with lid open.
This debate has been answered by the CEO: Cooling compatible with closed-lid operations? - #5 by nrp
I personally dock my laptop open, with some method of providing additional space below for added airflow. At home, that’s a 3D printed stand I modified to keep the monitor height even with the bottom of my second monitor (~6 in of air below the laptop). When traveling, it’s whatever I can stick under the back “foot” of the laptop (~0.5in of air).
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I have the same issue. Got my Framework last August; this summer noted issues with the touchpad and finally discovered the swollen battery. Of course, now I am past the one year threshold, but the problem already started before… I will contact support and see if they can help.
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Looks like this batch of 61Wh lasts a year give or take a couple months. Unfortunate 
Could people reporting bulging batteries please also report how they are using the battery.
Are you often cycling it deeply, or mostly using the laptop with the charger connected, or some of each?
If you often use the laptop with the charger connected do you just let it charge to 100% or do you limit charging to 80%, 70% or whatever in the BIOS?
Thanks.
From the earlier cases that do have this information, it’s pretty clear that it’s not user wear related and is in fact abnormal battery performance. There doesn’t seem to be a specific wear pattern that causes this.
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Oh no mines coming up on that mark or even passed it already, well keep an eye on it.
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Note for anyone with the 61Wh battery: this damage will be covered under warranty, your warranty will be extended and there’s a fix in place for this.
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Back to a 55Wh-ish battery.
I think that if you know beforehand, you’ll be free to charge it to 100% just before you need to use the laptop on battery power.
If the 55wh battery doesn’t swell as easily than 61wh, and the 61wh swelling gets mitigated by charging to 90%(55wh). What’s the difference between a factory 61wh battery and a 55wh battery chip-tuned to 61wh?
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Meaning you’ll either have to go into the BIOS to fiddle with charging the threshold (flipping it from 90% back to 100%)…or ectool it if you’re running Linux.
Exactly. No difference in my book if you had to do a 61Wh - 10% just so it has the same level of aging reliability (as the 55Wh battery) in the long-plugged-in use case.
The 61Wh is over promised in this case of long-plugged-in.
It’s almost like a hardware regression via software (BIOS).