Seems to be a lot of incidences of this issue suddenly popping up recently, as if it affected a particular batch or the general charge on the RTC battery has finally drained for those of us who don’t keep the laptop plugged in most of the time (it is meant to be a portable device after all).
While I appreciate the transparency and communication from Framework in this thread it sounds like the situation is essentially unfixable and is almost destined to occur for 12th Gen Intel boards as well since they’ve insisted on using the same rechargable battery type. I’m afraid I really don’t see sense in this decision (think of the waste caused by those having to reset the mainboard and then accidentally breaking the clip, as opposed to just recycling a coin battery every… decade or so?), unless there is indeed a particular hardware problem with those of us suffering this issue.
You would have thought that the RTC battery will only be used when the main battery is completely and utterly dead (e.g. below 11.1V, for a 3 cell)
I’m not against rechargeables but I think if your laptop battery have charge at the end of the three week gap, then uh-uhh. Something needs to be done.
If the battery is dead by the time you try to turn it back on, then understandable, but still bad. so a meh.
I’m not sure about the type of batteries used in my system. I know that my current two laptops dont have a RTC (and is kept by the internal battery). Which I am not against.
The big hope for me is that Framework take this seriously and hopefully there is either a BIOS fix or maybe a different battery could be recommended. If the dormant time could be pushed to say three weeks, I think this could solve the issue for a lot of people. Three to five days is totally unacceptable for such a device.
Having a laptop you can’t really rely on to just work, like all the previous laptops you had, is a bit of a confidence dent. Especially as it cost me £1200.00! Had it been a £300 Chromebook, I’d put it on Ebay for ‘spares and repair’ and move on.
I’m hoping Framework can keep us updated on any investigations and possible fixes. I have faith in them currently. I can’t imagine this is an impossible fix.
Otherwise expect the following types of headlines -
“Framework Laptop - The “repairable laptop” that turned out to be not quite so repairable!”
I don’t think it is going to be a massive problem since, well, after all the battery is replaceable.
This. Sums up everything very well.
Honestly I don’t … I think the issue is that the current RTC seem to be draining whenever it is off, even when the primary battery is attached, which is extremely stupid.
This will not be so stupid if the system can power on without the rtc battery, but I don’t think it work like that.
There is the inheritent issue of a recharbeable RTC battery losing charge very quickly as it need to be topped off all the time, which as we know puts pressure on the battery.
HP’s answer to this is very simple: Just don’t use one. The BIOS clock and setting will die once the primary battery is removed. Which I think is fine. The reason it exist, I think, is because the board is (at least, designed) to be able to operated without a primary battery, and thus swapping out RTC batteries is not going to be a very viable option. In reality the bios is somewhat buggy and it will refuse to turn on when the battery is absent(might be fixed)
Which is not the point. The point is in having a RTC battery that will either hold charge for a reasonably long enough time so the computer can still turn on after losing power, and second is to not have things freak out if the primary battery is present.
Which is also why I am suggesting a power pin on the framework laptop – if you design a system to supply constant power to the board (without needing the fussy USB-C power handshake, among other things), then you can eliminate the need to have a rechargeable battery because desktop fixtures are usually always powered (just like you can with a battery). Thus the RTC battery can be designed to be non-rechargeable because it will only kick in in a emergency.
In the case of a laptop the primary battery will be supplying all the power to the system (until the battery is removed or fully discharged).
If I cannot design a system to meet the requirement (of not using RTC if a battery is present) then at least I will make the RTC battery unnecessarily large (e.g. a 500mA LiPo) so it will have plenty of juice, even when I undercharge it to 3.95V to extend its life span. Or simply not have one. Although in the latter case, as I said, the USB handshake can be annoying.
Perhaps new boards have a “laptop only use” board and a “multifunction board” that has the RTC so it can be used in laptop or “enthusiast mode”.
I really don’t envisage using my board in anything but the laptop. I don’t mind having to reset the BIOS if I unplug the battery for some reason, maybe once every 2-3 years.
In the meantime it may require those of us affected to send their boards back for a few wires to be soldered on to route around the RTC. Who knows?
wait where you get the numbers from
the drain is 30µA/h (from the main battery?), at 15.4 to 17.6V (4 cell). is also LiHV. Assume average voltage of 16V, which equal to 30µA * 16V = 480µW. or 0.48mW.
Battery is 55WH, so 114583 hours you get.
If the drain is from the coin cell: , then the power consumption becomes 30µA * 3V = 90µW.
If the battery are to last 3 weeks (21 days), you need 15120µAh of coin cell. or 15mAh.
Is the math wrong?
I just want to point out to anyone stumbling across this (at this point very large) topic that MOST people don’t have any problem here. I routinely leave my laptop unplugged and powered off for several weeks and at least a few times for more than a month. I’ve =never= had to pull the battery.
If nothing else please be sure to read Framework @nrp response (post #43 Jun 15th).
Still not great that there’s been radio silence since that post but it does feel like there is a certain amount of “vocal minority” driving this conversation.
I’m definitely not trying to discount their concerns – the problem is real and it is completely reasonable to expect that you can leave a laptop unpowered for a week and expect it to turn on without having to open up the case!! – but for people reading this for general interest and to get information before maybe buying the laptop I think it’s fair for them to know that this isn’t quite as big a =general= issue as it might appear.
This review was linked in another thread on the forums, and summarizes the issue with the RTC battery well, and it gave me an idea.
Other than @anon81945988’s letter to Framework, to get them to actually give this issue the attention, and response it deserves, anyone who is having issues like this should vocalize on other platforms as well.
If they don’t want to give this the transparency we want (as they are still not answering many questions on this thread), then we need to make this a bigger issue for them to consider.
I agree with @Richard_Lees and @Senhara here. Having read through this entire thread, it seems like a largely isolated problem that not many people are facing.
This thread seems to largely be filled with overreactions, and input from people who aren’t facing the problem.
On the other hand, second opinions by media or individuals are also important. It’s an important role of journalism. Hope that tech media write not only a typical product review, but also write deeper insight about these kinds of Framework’s major challenges.
When you left your laptop unused, was it at full battery before? Did you have to connect AC power to get it to boot? Did you find that even though you had to connect AC power, the main internal battery still had plenty of charge? Are you using windows? Did you have to manually set the system clock?
There are two separate issues:
RTC high drain and low capacity design that causes the RTC battery to drain much more quickly than other laptops. Design requires AC to be connected or RTC battery to be charged for the laptop to boot even if there is enough juice in the main battery. Also, system clock will not keep requiring it to be manually set if you use windows. This presumably affects everyone when leaving laptop unplugged for 2-3 weeks. Some people are having this happen even more often (5 days).
CPU state / dead RTC - after #1 occurs, laptop will not boot at all even if AC is connected requiring the full reset procedure (remove RTC battery, plug in 2nd charger, etc). This is more rare.
Framework has said #1 is by design and they have used same design in 12 Gen boards but have lowered idle drain. No fix for 11th gen users.
Framework has said #2 is caused by Intel. Obviously #2 is worse because of the design decision made by framework in #1.
For those saying to contact support, they have stopped replying to several tickets and nrp has not answered questions to his post regarding design decisions.
This is outright false. Like a sane OS, Windows uses NTP. This isn’t 1998, this is 2022. Everyone uses NTP. It only doesn’t use it if you manually disable automatic timekeeping.
I can echo what @Richard_Lees is saying. I have 2 Framework laptops that I have never had any problems with. I have never had to reset the mainboard or remove the RTC battery.
It is unfortunate that your situation is not the same, but please refrain from calling other people here liars.
I appreciate you commenting in this thread even though you use your framework often and don’t have the issues others are experiencing. I am happy the laptop matches your use case. Unfortunately you likely have less insight on the frustration because of this. I’d invite you to install fresh Windows 11, charge up your framework to 100%, then shut it down and set it away for a few weeks like many of us do who don’t use framework as our primary daily machine.
You will discover that the framework will not boot without connecting AC power even though the main battery still has plenty of juice. When you do connect AC power, it may boot after a few minutes, or you may have to perform the reset procedure on the RTC battery. If it does boot, you’ll not the internal main battery will still have plenty of life. You’ll note that the system time is off and isn’t automatically syncing. You’ll note that even if you go to Date & Time that in Windows 11 “Set time automatically” is enabled by default. If you click Sync now, you’ll see it still does not sync.
You’ll notice errors in the event viewer that explains the issue.
Yes Windows uses NTP but Sync automatically only works if the clock isn’t too far off. You can try to launch Edge but you won’t be able to load any websites because of certificate validation errors (due to system time being off). You have to manually set the time to be closer to the correct time, then Sync time works. Try it yourself.
This is a very wise statement! I agree, others may have different experiences. However, with regards to Windows NTP, there are actually several articles which state the tolerance of windows “Set time automatically” and “Sync now”. Many threads out there do conclude the issue boils down to BIOS, CMOS, or RTC battery failure causing the time to drift outside of the Windows tolerance.
