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Framework won’t be just a laptop company anymore
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this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2024
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I don't understand why companies keep putting such small batteries in laptops. Especially in the 16" laptop, anything less than 90 is just not acceptable in something that actually costs real money and isn't an ultra thin device. Cheap garbage? Fine. You get what you pay for. Starting at $1700 pre built? No.
Anything with over 100WH batteries would need airline approval before you can fly with it. This is why laptop makers rarely exceed this limit.
https://www.faa.gov/hazmat/packsafe/portable-electronic-devices-with-batteries
Yeah, but that's not what I'm talking about. It's really hard to find laptops today that get up to 100 Wh. And the guy you were talking to wanted at least 90 Wh.
It ain't the FAA making laptops have 50 Wh or less batteries.
A current Thinkpad T14 with the largest battery option is 52 Wh.
The few laptops that you can get in 2024 with a 100 Wh battery are generally very-high-power gaming laptops with a relatively short usable battery life off one charge.
Tuxedo Computers out in Germany makes a non-gaming 14-inch InfinityBook with a 100 Wh battery.
There are some very expensive "ruggedized" laptops with large batteries intended for use away from civilization, like the Panasonic Toughbook (can take two batteries and do 136 Wh total).
It's really uncommon today.
MacBook Pros are 100Wh as well. Battery life is incredible.
Hmm?
https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/
M3 pros are 72.4Wh.
Ah so just the 16” is 100Wh then. Makes sense, more room.
It’s tougher to fit a reasonably sized battery to a laptop where you can replace everything. And it’s 85 which is not so far from 90.
It does add something by way of weight, but I just can't believe that the entire market out there honestly wants to have shorter laptop battery life over a slightly-heavier laptop. I mean, sure, all else held equal, I'd take a lighter laptop. And there's some size where I don't want a larger battery -- like, I don't want a Tesla Powerwall glued to the underside of my laptop. But at 100Wh, the current airline limit? Hell, yes, I sure as heck would rather have the longer battery lifetime.
And let's even say that someone is completely fine with their existing laptop battery lifetime -- like, they usually use their laptop plugged in, only have short stints away from a plug, like a conference room. Then you still can trade battery capacity for other desirable things. Stick a brighter screen on. Have a higher refresh rate. Have a more-powerful CPU or GPU and the fans to cool it. Have the capacity to drive external USB devices that may slurp power off the laptop's battery. Restrict the maximum-charge level so that the battery's lifetime is extended -- batteries degrade rather more quickly if fully charged, and a number of devices have settings to permit them to be only partially-charged -- without needing to cut into the capacity for a single charge.
I absolutely understand small-battery, budget laptops existing for people who strongly want the price to be at a minimum. Cut RAM down to a bare minimum, put in as little storage as possible, slash the battery to what's tolerable.
I also understand that there are people who are hell-bent on ultra-light laptops, want everything at all possible stripped out. That's fine too.
But surely there are people who don't fall into one of those two camps.
I just can't believe how hard it is to find 100Wh laptops in 2024. And traditionally, that wasn't the case. You could find plenty of laptops with 100Wh batteries. In the past, some laptop vendors let you choose the size of battery you wanted, and some even had dual batteries, one internal and a hot-swappable battery.
I get that USB PD powerbanks can help alleviate some of the problem, and I'm sure that that has to have been the factor causing laptop vendors to start slashing internal battery sizes, but they also aren't the same thing as an actual internal battery. There's no protocol for them to report their charge, so a laptop can't report life remaining. Theoretically, one could have one pretend to be a UPS rather than a battery, and there are various protocols for those, though OSes don't -- well, Linux doesn't, don't know about other OSes -- treat UPSes as another battery, so you're not gonna get software packages incorporating it into their "time remaining" estimate in the dock, and I'm not aware of any USB powerbanks that actually try to use this route. It's another box and cable to lug around, and another port on the laptop tied up.
Here's the internals of the 13 with a 61Wh battery:
https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/IMG_0054.jpeg
And here's the 16 with an 85Wh battery:
https://images.prismic.io/frameworkmarketplace/0b001897-9e05-406e-8f50-af54ba76a723_Load+up+on+memory+and+storage.jpg?auto=compress,format
Where would a larger battery fit?
The real answer to your question is to wait 3-4 years for battery technology to get about 20% better (given historical trends of 5-8% improvements per year).
You'd obviously have to design the laptop around the battery and not just retrofit it in. Make it a bit thicker, make it a bit longer? The 16" already isn't a small, thin, or light laptop so the little extra room needed wouldn't make that much of a difference.
Longer doesn't work because it has to fit in existing bags people have. Thickening it won't work because reviewers will then complain it's too thick.
I have a Toshiba laptop from around 2012 which has a slide-out optical drive. To me, it's thick but not too thick; it's just right. If we could return to that size, I think we'd be good. It'd also support better cooling (my Framework 13 with an i7-1280P gets hot, and there just isn't enough space for a bigger cooler). Reviewers over the past 10 years have pushed for thinner and thinner, and we gave up too much in the meantime.
Same goes for screen bezels and built in webcams. All else being equal, a cam with a bigger sensor is better because it can capture more light. Thin screen bezels force a small webcam, and thus your laptop has a shittier camera than a 10 year old smartphone.
In both cases, I don't think actual customers care all that much past a certain point. Reviewers have been deducting stars for a slightly thicker case or a slightly thicker bezel than other models on the market, and customers just go along with it.
I don't think people looking at Framework care too much about reviewers. They're targeting DIY enthusiasts, which are also the type that'll probably be reading the measurements and whatnot themselves.
The do have to source the same parts as the rest of the industry. This is why, for example, they can't have a socketable laptop CPU. Those don't exist anymore, and Framework is too small to afford a custom part from Intel or AMD.
Same with batteries. A thicker laptop battery may not even exist.
Yup, but maybe they'll get there. Valve was able to get a "custom" chip for their Steam Deck, so it's possible Framework could get big enough to get socketable CPUs. But yeah, the priority there should be incredibly low, since replacing the entire motherboard is acceptable (at least to me).
I'm guessing batteries are a bit less expensive to order custom since there are so many slightly different form factors among various devices. If it was prohibitively expensive, I'd expect to see more standardization.
I've used thicker laptops for years and had no problem whatsoever with them in that time.
I suppose that there's some theoretical thickness where a laptop becomes unergonomic, but my desktop's keyboard is far thicker than my laptop's, and it's got no constraints other than being ergonomic.
Is someone using some kind of incredibly-thin carrying case? I haven't seen that. I throw my laptop in a laptop backpack. It could be probably at least three times thicker and still fit in that.
Thick isn't a problem for bags (up to a point). It's reviewers complaining about it and deducting stars that's the problem.
Put a couple 18650 cells under the hingle like it's 2008
It's not wanted by the market obviously. Most only need their laptop to last from the office on the commute
That's just not true. My laptop (MacBook Pro Intel) has atrocious battery life, and Apple made a big deal about battery life improvement with the M-series chips. It's a very valid complaint at my office, and we routinely have people running back to their desks to grab a charger or someone when meetings go long.
There's obviously a trade-off there, but I've heard complaints about battery life for years now, but the market just hasn't filled that need. I guess it's kinda filled by massive external battery banks and plug-ins everywhere?
But having a larger battery as an option would be welcome. Make a thicc chassy as an option at checkout on the 16" laptop.