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.
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).
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.
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).
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.
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.
Well, design flaw or not, I can tell you that the volume of the 4-cell battery was significantly more than 1.5% when I removed it from the laptop. I don’t know exactly what went wrong in there, and I certainly wasn’t going to keep it in my house to find out.
In any event, it’s now been nearly 3 months since I recieved the replacement 3-cell battery, and almost 2.5 months since I notified Purism Support about it. (Using the instructions here.) Apart from the automated GitLab Support Bot, I have not received any response whatsoever. I’ve been running my laptop on AC power only with no battery in the case. I sent a follow-up e-mail to Purism about a month ago, but all I got out of that was a notice that a new ticket had been submitted.
I’m pretty disappointed, if I’m honest. Yes, the laptop is fully functional on AC power, and yes, I don’t often need to use it on the go these days, but it’s the principle of the thing.
Given a complete lack of any contact, much less support, from Purism itself I felt compelled to send this e-mail to both support@puri.sm and feedback@puri.sm today. I was not surprised at all to find that I received no response other than the GitLab bot. Twice. So be it.
Hello,
It has now been over 3 months since I first contacted Purism support regarding the replacement battery I ordered back in September of 2024. Since that time, my Librem 14 has been without a functional battery, and without any real mobility.
I have contacted support no fewer than 3 times during the past 3 months, with no response other than from an e-mail bot. While the laptop remains functional provided an AC adaptor, that isn’t the point. The battery Purism sent me is now long past the return window, and I am still unable to power the laptop using it, nor am I (apparently) able to illicit a response from Purism support (other than the GitLab bot, which doesn’t count). I will be replacing this Librem14 with a competitor’s model in the near future.
I understand that Purism is a small company. I appreciate that your staff are undoubtedly under a great deal of pressure, particularly near the end of the calendar year. However, a 3+ month delay in support responding to a request is unacceptable, by any business model.
At this stage, I expect that I will eat the cost of this battery. I can accept that. However, I will no longer be doing business with Purism. While I am in 100% agreement with Purism’s goals and philosophy, there is too much evidence that the company is over capacity, under staffed, and under funded. I do wish you the best of luck in the future because I truly do believe in the vision you offer. I only hope you are able to secure the funding, staff, and support necessary to make it a reality.