Hello, i found that my librem 15 v4 battery is bubbled so i took it off from the laptop slot, i tried to turn it on without battery attached to the laptop using direct dc charger plugged in into the laptop, when i click laptop power button, the laptop not responding at all like because it has no power source.
So i think that this laptop can’t active without battery attached to it. Can you help me ? Or tell me how i can buy new battery for my librem 15 v4 ?
Contact Purism support (support@puri.sm) to buy a new battery.
According to this Reddit thread you should be able to run the Librem 15 without the battery. Your laptop may have other problems, so it is worth talking to support.
Thanks, i did it and their response was blazing fast, now i can use it, but they still looking for battery replacement.
Sounds like useful but missing information that could be shared here in case it helps someone else?
My Librem 15v4 arrived on 2019-02-27 and by 2020-08-01 the battery was only lasting about 3.5 hrs, and by 2021-05-21 the battery was almost dead. It’s possible that I left it on the charger too long. I don’t know if the Librem 15v4 cuts the power from the charger to the battery. Does anyone know?
I wanted to buy a replacement battery from the Purism shop, but both new and used batteries were out of stock (I see at this moment that a used battery with 90-day warranty is in stock).
By the way, @mladen confirmed that the Librem 15v4 can run with a dead battery AND with the battery completely removed. I verified both.
Thanks to @MrChromebox for giving the part number (U753-TS44-111) at Librem 15 rev 3 battery replacement , which allowed me to search online. I found nothing on eBay and many other battery sites. Everyone was also out of stock. Finally on 2021-06-05 I found https://www.replacement-laptop-battery.com in Hong Kong, which had it in stock (and just now is saying out of stock). A new one was $109.16 with 1-year warranty and shipping included (the same price as a used one just now seen on Purism’s shop with 90-day warranty). So I decided to buy it and hope I had not thrown away my money. This was the first time I had bought anything directly from China. I used PayPal, they shipped it very quickly, and they emailed me a tracking link. I watched it depart from Shenzhen, arrive in LA on 2021-06-23, then at my Post Office on 2021-07-08. So, 1 month, 3 days from China. Not too bad!
It works fine and I reliably get 5.5 hrs out of it, with about half screen brightness, Internet active, and an external monitor attached. I now use GNOME Clocks to set a timer to remind me to either unplug or re-plug the charger, although I did run it down to 10% to see if GNOME gave me a low-battery warning, and it did. That did not happen with the old almost-dead battery: the system would just power off with no warning. A couple of times I have charged to 100% and the max time I saw was 5hr 38min.
One warning: the white plastic connector from the battery to the Librem 15v4 is very flimsy, basically a part with a duty cycle of 2 or 3. When I removed the original battery connector, it disintegrated in my hands. So I was a bit worried that when I plugged in the new battery, it would break. I was lucky and it did not.
Hope this helps someone!
p.s. The only thing that could be better about this is if I didn’t have to remove 15 [corrected: 14] screws from the back of the Librem 15v4. At least Purism made them all Phillips head screws of the same size, though a few are longer than the rest, so you have to keep track. A battery door with a more durable battery connector would be great. Does the Librem 14v1 improve on this?
there are less screws and all the same length, so yes? 
I searched and searched for a photo of the bottom of the Librem 14, and I could not find one anywhere. 
I finally found out how many screws are on the bottom from @nicole.faerber 's 2021-04-08 blog post: 9.
My Librem15v4 has 15 [corrected: 14] screws of at least 2 lengths, and the Librem 13v3 &13v4 have 12 screws of 2 different lengths. It is a very nice improvement for the L14 to have only 9 screws, all the same length. Bravo!
Thanks @nochelibre for the info on where to find a battery!
@MrChromebox, can you provide the batterypart number for the 15v4? My battery is going after just a year. In the Purism store they only have refurbished batteries. I’d rather get a new one.
The Librem 15v3 and 15v4 use the same battery. The same battery part # (U753-TS44-111) is what I bought and I installed it into my Librem 15v4. It works fine.
Thanks, that helps!
I wanted to ask. Has anyone used tlp to manage batteries on Librem 15, 14 or 13’s? Is it worth it or does it work well with PureOS and Librems?
Great find, @zks1! TLP is in the PureOS repository. So many gems are already in the repo for us to discover. I keep finding them. PureOS 9 has TLP 1.1-2, and you can get TLP 1.3.1-2~bpo10+1 if you enable Debian buster-backports (assuming that doesn’t cause any problems in PureOS 9). PureOS 10 will have TLP 1.3.1-2 because that’s what’s in Debian 11 bullseye (unless Purism removed it).
From the TLP documentation:
Version 1.3.1 and lower
- IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads only: start and stop charge threshold, discharge and recalibration
Version 1.4 and higher - additionally:
- ASUS laptops: stop charge threshold
- Huawei MateBooks: start and stop charge threshold
- LG Gram laptops: fixed stop charge threshold at 80% aka battery care limit
- Lenovo laptops (non-ThinkPad series): fixed stop charge threshold at 60% aka battery conservation mode
Samsung laptops: fixed stop charge threshold at 80% aka battery life extenderDisclaimer: all other laptop vendors/brands are not supported.
@nicole.faerber mentioned that the Librem 13 & 15 use an off-the-shelf EC (embedded controller) with proprietary firmware and Purism had to take it or leave it as-is. Maybe it’s the same EC used in one of these other laptops.
Questions for @nicole.faerber :
I am afraid this is pretty easy to anser:
With some patches it should though work in the L14…
Cheers
nicole
Any ideas on a replacement battery for a Librem 15? The U753-TS44-111 does not seem to exist anymore.
@shantirao: As of this moment, Purism lists used ones in the store, which would be better than a totally dead battery.
You might want to ask them where they came from and how used they are, that is, how many hours of life they have left. If 4 hours or more, not too bad. I get 5.5 hrs on the new one I bought direct from Hong Kong in June 2021 (yes, they’re now out of stock), and that’s with half brightness on the internal screen, running an external monitor, connected to the Internet and doing plenty of Web browsing, and doing everything I normally do.
I would be interested in what Purism says about the used batteries: @mladen, @joao.azevedo
@nicole.faerber, thanks for your answers, but they raise more questions for me.
A key factor for battery health is being able to set the charging thresholds. So, when you say the EC is not supported by any linux driver, it gives me cause for concern as to how purism is designing the hardware?
I have come to learn that since kernel 5.4+ it is now possible to work with sysfs subsystem to set these thresholds?
will this work using Byzantium and L13/15/14 , etc?
Thanks in advance!
L14 with the librem-ec ACPI driver. The (EC on the) L13/15 do not support this feature
Ok, thanks @MrChromebox. That is what I was worried about. I have worked out a routine where I can try to monitor my battery stats and unplug / plug in the laptop as needed to manually operate to the thresholds. It’s a challenge, but It’s also good to learn how these types of things are handled in a computer/kernel/OS, etc. There is so much we take for granted in how our technology really works under the hood.