Hey, so I purchased a Librem 15 laptop and got it yesterday. During 4-6 hours of use since then it has spontaneously died twice.
The screen just suddenly goes dark. Both times it has happened it has been unplugged (using battery, but with plenty of charge, the most recent occurrence happened at ~40%) and the event is accompanied by what I would describe as a quiet electrical pop coming from the corner with the power button (I could not tell for sure here tho). The interesting part is that after the crash, it does not start-up or respond when I press the power button… until I plug it back in, then it starts up normally. This leads me to believe it is a hardware and not a software issue.
I have replaced PureOS with Ubuntu.
Any ideas about what is happening?
Is there any way I could diagnose and fix this myself?
Is there any log information anywhere that would be useful for me to report?
Is this a problem with the Librem line or just my specific unit?
This seems like a battery problem (because it does not happen with AC plugged in, right?). Try disconnecting your battery (you need to open the back cover by removing the screws) and leave it disconnected overnight. Then connect and see if this will happen again.
I am having the random crashing problem when my Librem 15 v3 is not plugged in, but I have not observed a popping sound. I have owned the laptop for 10 months without experiencing this. This is a new problem which began today and has happened twice so far, also at around 40% charge.
Can you explain the battery disconnect test? Are you just trying to confirm that it’s a battery problem? Or is there some significance to leaving it disconnected overnight?
Update 4 days later: My battery will not hold a charge above 65%. Please advise
FYI, I received this response from Purism support:
You can try disconnecting the battery from the MB and leave it like this over night, this has shown to help “reset” the battery. You can also try the reset button to see if it will help.
Success! Disconnecting the battery overnight did the trick. Plugged it in this morning and was able to charge the battery to 100%. Will edit this post if I experience any more problems.
I do not leave the laptop plugged in when the battery reaches 100% because I have noticed a screen flicker (as discussed in another thread). I recently started running an external monitor via HDMI. The external monitor does not flicker, but the laptop monitor still flickers with a full charge, so I tend to unplug it, let it run awhile and then plug it back in again when I notice the battery is getting low.
Unfortunately, today the laptop suddenly died again while running the external monitor. The battery indicated 12% charge as soon as I rebooted.
This problem has recently returned for me. I will typically work with the battery plugged in until the charge is above 90%, then I unplug and work for awhile and then plug it in again. The laptop consistently shuts down when the battery reaches ~30%. I have done the overnight unplugging of the battery trick and although it worked after my October 2018 attempt mentioned above, this doesn’t help me anymore. Do I need a replacement battery @mladen?
@ejorgenson I am currently running Ubuntu and PureOS in a dual boot scenario (because something in the PureOS openssl binaries breaks a critical task I need for work). I installed battery-monitor on Ubuntu and set notifications at levels that are useful for my scenario. I set a custom notification for 40% which reminds me to plug in the laptop, but I sure wish I could get better battery performance.
Most likely yes. But please try the entire procedure (with reset button and with disconnecting the battery, leave it a bit longer unplugged), if this does not help, contact me @support please.