I just noticed that my work laptop (MS Surface Laptop Studio 2) has “Smart Charge” that limits the battery to 80% when it detects it’s plugged in extensively. This link indicates that it’s enabled at a vendor level but the framework is baked into Windows 11. Is there any plan to make this feature available for Framework Laptops?
It looks like a similar, but less specific, request for essentially the same functionality was made a couple years back for the 13. Allusions are made to a capacity limit value in BIOS but from what I could make of it, it doesn’t seem to be as expansive and intuitive as Windows Smart Charge.
Edit: It seems a BIOS charge limit exists on the 13 but it does not appear to be intelligent, instead just capping the max charge in all cases.
What exactly makes Windows charging “intelligent”?
(On MS Surface Devices, at least, not sure about other vendors’ implementations) it uses machine learning to analyze various data points to determine if a given “charge session” is likely to be a top-off or an extended period of being plugged in (desktop mode, I’ll call it). It apparently analyzes your activity and location during the day to determine if and when you are likely to go off-charger, and will pump it to 100%. Similarly, if you plug it in somewhere significantly away from your normal geolocation, or on another network, it will assume a short-term charge and go to 100%. But if it detects you use it almost exclusively on “desktop mode” it will limit the charge to 80% until either (a) you ask it to charge to 100%, or (b) the machine intelligence engine determines you are likely to take it out of desktop mode in the near future (based on past behaviors and actions it’s analyzed). Similar to adaptive charging on Android phones but more in-depth and a LOT more AI involved.
That’s probably a terrible explanation, I’m an engineer not a teacher (anymore).
Another note is that this may be exclusive to the AI-filled 23H2 update for Win11, since I do not recall seeing it active on 22H2.
This is how it worked on MS Surface devices originally on Windows 11 (and how it works on pre-CoPilot Windows), but my company’s Microsoft rep indicated that a lot more ML and AI are baked in with the CoPilot launch. (It was part of their pitch to get us to pay for copilot on EVERYTHING imaginable)
Oh yes, the mythical AI. Limitless potential, and right now! With our current tech.
In reality, it can never be reliable enough for this. Learning habits can only go so far. Even if much of your personal use is regular, there will be times that break any regular routine. During those times, AI “smart” charging will do more harm than good, since it made you accustomed to not needing to think about selecting full charge when you need it.
Of course. It’s the normal cycle of pitching the new hyped-up thing as the solution to everything. Just a small fee of only $X99.95 per month. Helps immensely if most people have little understanding of the hyped thing’s inner workings and the true limits of the tech.
What Framework could use is an easier one-click option for doing a one-time full-charge when you’re normally on a charge-limited desktop mode.
Souns nice but in the end what it does is still just limiting charging to a certain percentage, right?
Me personally, I prefer to have full control over the charging habits of my laptop. I like to set and forget. Probably gonna go for 80 - 90 % and leave it like this until I really need a full charge.
Most of the time I’m going to be in places where I can charge the laptop anyways, so I don’t need to always push to 100 % which shortens battery life.
I have a cheap Thinkpad that I use every day (on and off AC daily) that I set up like this and after five years it shows a battery wear level of 16 %. I’m actually not sure if it’s good or bad but it feels good considering the five years.
That would also work, if Framework doesn’t want to mess with MS’s smart charge infrastructure/API (and I wouldn’t blame them). Booting into BIOS to change the charge level is not terribly useful or convenient. I just thought it was useful that Windows has it baked in for vendors to easily tie in to and figured it seemed like a low-effort way to add the optional functionality.
For what it’s worth, CoPilot in Windows is expected to be free for the duration of the Windows 11 support cycle. It may move to subscription based in 12 if the rumors of 12 requiring a base subscription are right; CoPilot may then become a license add-on.
More or less, yeah. It has some fancy logic in deciding when to charge to 100% but otherwise it’s just limiting it to a vendor-set level (which the vendor could theoretically leave open for the user to set). And you can always easily override SmartCharge and charge to 100% without issue.
Data scientist checking in here, this man is right.
The BIOS options on the Framework 13s allow you to set a charge limit from within the BIOS. Not as dynamic as doing it in the OS, but a quick cursory glance here didn’t seem to have mentioned that information.
Apologies if it has already been shared in this thread.
The Framework option in BIOS is much better.
That smart charge feature is pure marketing BS. If you look into forums and Surface users talking about the feature, you’ll find, the ‘smart’ portion never actually works. It either is on when people want to turn it off, or it’s never on at all when people want it on. I’m sitting in front of a SLS right now, it’s been docked for a whole week, and Smart Charge is miraculously… not on, I’m at 100% battery.
There’s no way to toggle it in settings, you can dig into the surface app to find a temporary off however, only when it’s on. It’s an incredibly frustrating and stupid setting, which would’ve been much better if Microsoft actually just let users control it themselves.
With the FM, you just boot into BIOS set the percentage you want, and it stays until you decide to change it. Know you’re going on a travel trip? Turn it off the day before and you’ll be at 100%. Know you’re in for a week of docked workstation use? Turn it to 70% and that’s it. The AI in ‘smart charging’ is far less useful and actively harms the feature if we’re honest here.
Coming from the RC Airplane/Drone area (+40 years and electric when it started to make sense), I had looked into the Battery issues for a long time.
From experience, the problem is not the charge level per se, but the temperature at which you charge the battery.
Problem comes from the fact that a hot battery (25⁰C) can hold more charge than the same battery at a lower temperature - say 10⁰C. This is the actual problem.
So - if you want to charge the batter to 100%, make sure the temperature is rather stable, or charge to 80 or 90% only so that the battery, if the temperature drops, can hold the charge without taking damage.
We would need to have a battery Charge/Temperature curve from Framework to know how high we can charge the battery before leaving home.
I would be 100% happy if they developed like an ACPI hook or something to manage that from Windows so you don’t have to reboot to change it.