Librem 14 Battery Won't Charge

Recently, the 4-cell battery in my Librem 14 began to swell to the point where the trackpad was being pushed up. I removed the battery and ordered a new 3-cell version (I might eventually want to add a 2nd M.2 drive). Anyway, it arrived yesterday and I installed it this morning. At first, everything seemed fine. upower reported the battery was charging at 84% with no warnings. So, I left the charger plugged in and set about doing some work. About 15 minutes later, the laptop abruptly powered down and would not power back up. I unplugged everything and let it sit for a minute before trying again. It did then power up but now upower indicated that the battery had 0% charge, and was not charging. I powered down the laptop and left the charger connected. After a while (maybe an hour or so), I rebooted to check again. And again upower showed 0% and not charging.

Right now, I have removed the battery and am running on AC power only. I’m a little hesitant to reconnect the battery, but I’ll do so if there are additional diagnostics I could/should run. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

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Happens with my old Dell every so often. My fix is to unplug and replug the power cord at the laptop end. The plus sign for charging usually comes back.

Once my power supply actually died, I ended up buying two new ones, (just in case).

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Provide information about your operating system, boot firmware, and EC firmware version.

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Apologies; I neglected to include that info. Below is the output from coreboot_util.sh, purism_ectool info, and neofetch, in that order.

#    Device: Librem 14
#    Serial: System Serial Number
#  Firmware: Standard (coreboot+SeaBIOS)
#   Version: 4.14-Purism-1 (06/18/2021)
----------------------

board: purism/librem_14
version: 1.13_2023-03-22

----------------------
             /////////////                xxxxx@librem14 
         /////////////////////            --------------- 
      ///////*767////////////////         OS: Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS x86_64 
    //////7676767676*//////////////       Host: Librem 14 1.0 
   /////76767//7676767//////////////      Kernel: 6.9.3-76060903-generic 
  /////767676///*76767///////////////     Uptime: 12 mins 
 ///////767676///76767.///7676*///////    Packages: 2616 (dpkg), 27 (flatpak), 9 (snap) 
/////////767676//76767///767676////////   Shell: bash 5.1.16 
//////////76767676767////76767/////////   Resolution: 1920x1080, 1920x1080 
///////////76767676//////7676//////////   DE: GNOME 42.9 
////////////,7676,///////767///////////   WM: Mutter 
/////////////*7676///////76////////////   WM Theme: Pop 
///////////////7676////////////////////   Theme: Pop-dark [GTK2/3] 
 ///////////////7676///767////////////    Icons: Pop [GTK2/3] 
  //////////////////////'////////////     Terminal: gnome-terminal 
   //////.7676767676767676767,//////      CPU: Intel i7-10710U (12) @ 4.700GHz 
    /////767676767676767676767/////       GPU: Intel Comet Lake UHD Graphics 
      ///////////////////////////         Memory: 3175MiB / 15866MiB 
         /////////////////////
             /////////////                                        
----------------------
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Okay, I have two ideas for you to explore:

  1. Boot up PureOS on a USB drive.
  2. Briefly swap to the 4-cell battery.

The first suggestion will determine whether or not the 3-cell battery is being detected by either operating system, while the second suggestion will be the control group to compare against. I assume the 4-cell battery’s charge should still be detected using either operating system.

Thanks for your response. Unfortunately, swapping to the 4-cell battery isn’t possible as I’ve already sent it for disposal. (There is hazardous waste collection near where I live.)

Since yesterday, this is what has occurred: I shut everything down, unplugged the AC adapter from both the wall and the laptop, removed the 3-cell battery again, and unplugged the little button battery underneath the SSD. I left the laptop in that state for about 40 minutes, thinking perhaps that the complete lack of any power might help the EC reset. I then reconnected everything, closed the laptop back up, and plugged it in. I left it powered down and plugged into the AC adapter for about 6 hours. I then booted up and checked upower. It reported the battery was charging, but extremely slowly. I shut it back down and let it charge overnight. However, this morning the laptop refused to power on. Once again I removed the 3-cell battery and tried to boot on AC power. Came right up with no issues. So, unfortunately it appears that I’m back where I started: with a battery that simply will not cooperate.

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Extremely slow charging it the current config charging for Librem 14. Sadly Librem 14 it build with very poor quality, the keyboard it is big huge shame for Purism. The keyboard/battery/etc look extremely cheaper, ATM im nervous about using the keyboard because it may be made of materials that are harmful to health. Purism claim that it selling premium and free software things but both is not true TO ME.
Purism Please Do Not Be Opensource(evil).

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Ordered from?

Assuming that you ordered it from Purism then you really ought to be contacting Purism Support because you have an apparently brand new battery and apparently it doesn’t work.

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Yes, I ordered it from Purism. Contacting Support will be my next step. But since this laptop is out-of-warranty, I figured it best to do what I could through these forums first. Thanks, all.

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I have seen the same problem with the trackpad on the L14 with a 4-cell battery. Is this dangerous?

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I would be interested to hear of your solution as I might contact them depending upon the outcome. Thanks!

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Yes it is.

A swelling Lithium battery, if that’s what you have, is never a good sign!

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When it hatches, will you get little Triple-A’s?

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I was actually hoping for twins.

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