> A laptop/phone that needs to be recharged every few weeks… heaven.
Agreed. Unfortunately it seems like increases in battery density are soaked up by either increased energy consumption (screen resolution/brightness, processor) or decreased battery volume to make a thinner device.
I have a smartwatch that doesn't require wall charging (a Garmin Instinct with solar) and I really like the combination of solar cells, low-power processor, monochrome screen, and frugal radios.
That got me curious about a low-powered laptop and I've been eyeing an e-ink tablet with keyboard (e.g. Boox Tab or Remarkable 2) but I think it'd be a little too limited for my laptop usecases. And all the super-energy-efficient phones (e.g. e-ink) I've seen simply shrink the battery volume to offset any efficiency gains.
> The spec sheet promises a battery life of 10 months (no backlight) - the Keychron K6 is fine - except that the battery life sucks, and it takes 3-4 seconds to wake up from sleep every time.
Turn off sleep. There's a key combo to do it (at least, there was on my model). It has such a small effect on battery life that I have no idea why they default to making it go to sleep like every two minutes of inactivity.
I do sometimes look at my mouse that's also bluetooth and runs on a single AA battery for months, and wonder WTF Keychron's doing wrong with power management. Oh well, at least it can work plugged-in, too. And it was cheap.
> Meanwhile it sounds like the MNT has some real flaws (the battery discharging thing), but the context of that isn't really described - can the battery controller IC use much less power but the proper code hasn't been written, or is it a true design mistake, or what?
There's a known (and fixed) keyboard LPC power drain issue, which is likely what TFA described.
> This solution is sort of clever but it sacrifices a ton of internal space that could have been spent on a bigger battery.
I wondered about that as well. Looking at the picture at the top of the main page, I see one small battery, and electronics that take up 2-3x the size of normal laptop electronics. Most current laptops have 60-80% of their chassis space occupied by batteries.
However, the description mentions a 55Wh battery, which is quite reasonable for a thin-and-light laptop. It says 1.3kg, which is a little heavier than desirable for the form factor (1-1.2kg), but not by much. On balance, this looks like a much more reasonable set of tradeoffs than past "repairable laptop" efforts I've seen; Framework is putting serious hardware engineering effort into this.
> Having a solar panel defeats the metric of "battery life measured in years".
eh, I don't see why. Solar pocket calculators were still sold with the understanding that their function and lifespan hinged upon the chemistry of the internal battery.
it's not like these things can function without some form of capacitance, and getting that to last a long time is tricky.
> That's surprisingly shitty for such a premium product, especially coming from a company that claims to be reducing e-waist.
Apple was the first vendor to glue-in batteries inside all of their laptops effectively forcing people to upgrade every 2-3 years when battery life degrades. Their "e-waste" and "green economy" posture is pure hypocrisy.
> Why would anyone buy a laptop with a non removable battery? It's crazy.
For me personally, it's because I never use my laptop without it being plugged in. There's nowhere I would want to use my laptop that I can't find an output (home, work, planes, airports, friends' houses, etc.)
The only exception I can think of is when actively riding public transit, but I never use my laptop in those situations.
A lot of laptops are also bought by people's employers and are a tiny cost that no one cares about (~$1,000 every 3 years for an employee making $300k+ in that amount of time). They don't care if the battery degrades.
My keyboard is never further away from my machine than the length of the cable, so I see absolutely no reason to complicate things by adding batteries to the equation.
> Their main concern sounds like a liability issue (they cite the aging Li-ion battery heavily)
Gratuitous power autonomy is quite high on my "things I won't buy" list. I was once scouring Amazon et al for some cheap bluetooth speakers for stationary use as a "poor man's Sonos", but they all came with their own integrated power bank. Ended up buying a radio that had BT input just as a secondary feature. About three times as expensive as originally planned, only to avoid seeing one more 18650 (or pair thereof) idling into decay under my watch.
I'm not always that eco-aware, but when I get stuck on an issue I tend to get irrationally zeaolous (probably a quite common form of mild bigotry)
>Then the batteries should be replaceable -- who pioneered non replaceable phone batteries?
You missed the point because you have a narrative you want to fit this situation into. The big picture is that there are valid reasons for sending devices to a landfill.
Every device that is currently made will end up in a landfill. Having the manufacturer and consumer responsible for these externalities is not a terrible policy, but this is not how you do it.
>Bingo. Profits before planet.
You're just a one-trick pony, aren't you? That you are writing this insightful commentary on a computing device that will end up in a landfill within the next 2 to 5 years, I'm sure, is lost on you.
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