I’ve been trying to get a replacement battery for my $1,700 Librem 15 laptop since 06/05/24. All I wanted to do was send the laptop in for battery service that I paid for… Then, after Purism tech support changed the battery, I could get started learning Linux.
I have been in shock since then. Purism has literally had replacement battery issues since some time in 2021. I’ve found lots of info on the forum about customers struggling with this issue since then.
Here’s a post I found that has tech details:
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, 45 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 14 , 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 26 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?