Introduction to Open Source Laptop Project by Lukas Henkel
resources.altium.com
resources.altium.com
Form factor: 13 inch, 3:2 aspect ratio display,
Display: 1080p resolution, no touchscreen, matte display.
RAM: DDR5 32 Gb
SoC: a top of the line mobile chipset like Snapdragon Gen 2. With roaming internet using phone SIMs.
Battery: 99 WHr. Fast charging. (Probably my biggest criteria)
Keyboard: Similar to Thinkpad keyboards.
Open Bootloader, so I that I can throw Linux in it without too much headache.
Give me something which may be a bit underpowered, but has multi day battery life and ability to fast charge in minute and I am good to go. I hope that open laptop initiatives do pick up, so that we can have such enthusiast grade devices.
3:2=1.5 and 1920:1080=1.777…
or am I missing something?
The 1440p suite includes a 3:2 resolution at 2160x1440.
4k is a bit much, but 1440p is too low. 3k or similar would make much more sense.
It should really look like this (but it doesn't):
HD - 1280p
FullHD - 1920p
WQHD/2K - 2560p
4K - 3840p
Sample (not affiliated)
> Microsoft Surface 3 10.8 FHD (1920x1280) Touchscreen 2-in-1 Education and Business Laptop Tablet (Intel Quad-Core Atom x7-Z8700, 4GB RAM, 64GB SSD) Mini DP, WiFi AC, Webcam, Windows 10 Pro (Renewed)
https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-1920x1280-Touchscreen-Educa...
> ability to fast charge in minute
Even with a bulky 200W charger you'll need at least half an hour to charge a 99Wh battery.
I want to dump 1000W in to charge the battery as fast as possible. Lose the heat through boiling water or something I don't care.
We already have it, the fastest charging phones charge their batteries faster than the fastest charging EVs.
Battery charge and discharge rate generally scales linearly with capacity, given the same battery technology twice as much battery should generally be able to handle twice as much energy in either direction. For the sale of comparison we divide the charge rate by the capacity to get a "C-Rate" where 1C is defined as the rate that would fully drain or charge the battery in one hour. For an EV with an 80kWh battery pack 80kW would be 1C, 160kW 2C, etc.
The fastest charging EVs on the market right now all peak in the 2.5-3C range, with the Hyundai-Kia e-GMP cars taking the lead even with a lower overall peak wattage due to their smaller batteries. The Lucid Air, Tesla Plaid, and Porsche/Audi siblings all hit higher watt numbers but have significantly larger batteries so they have an easier time doing that.
A modern cell phone with fast charging can be well above 5C. The wattage numbers are thousands of times lower, but so are the capacities. The fastest charging phone I can find right now claims 300 watts and has demonstrated a bit over 280 from the wall which would imply around 260 reaching the device. In to a 4100mAh battery, which assuming standard chemistry is 4.2v nominal means 17.22 watt hours, so 260 watts would be just over 15C. A Tesla P100D would need to be accepting 1.5 megawatts to match that performance.
Hope that puts it in to perspective for you. The fact that phones exist that can charge at hundreds of watts is absurd already, without some serious advances in both battery and wiring tech we are not getting significantly faster than that.
https://www.corrosionpedia.com/definition/395/diffusion-limi...
For an EV the power use would be excessive, but 1000W into a phone that can get you to 80% capacity in that time is more then enough.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/19/electric...
From what I could see from some videos is one of its weakest points. The input device (in my opinion) in this case has to be excellent, I wouldn't care to pay a bit more for this. I would sacrifice the gaming buttons for a bigger regular keyboard and use a trackpoint instead of a tiny trackball.
The thing with the trackpoint is that almost requires no lift of hands from the keyboard, it takes a bit getting used to but in my opinion is one of the best input devices that a notebook or small computer can have.
The devterm seems to follow the Dynabook layout which I think is great, if you could also bend a bit the screen a that would be terrific.
I have probably only used it a few times, it is very cool to look at but less so a functional device one could use for serious work comfortably.
What I like about it (thinking about getting one) is the upgradeability - the RPi CM4 adapter should give it a couple extra generations, but I'm not a fan of the 480-line display idea unless one could use Wayland to extract more virtual pixels.
They made big announcements about opening it all up but it wasn't really until this past year or so that it was really.
But from what I understand, Thunderbolt4 and USB4 are mostly interchangeable. It's just that USB4 supports additional slower modes for devices that don't need the speed.
Hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but the next AMD processors and chipsets support USB4 which provides Thunderbolt4.
[Edit] The AMD Framework would provide you with all of your requirements, except cell service, but you could install it when one does become available?
Also now you can do pretty much that with a separate powerbank charging your laptop via usb C. it's more cumbersome but with a more universal interface and more versatile.
If they ever put a mobile SoC in a 13 incher with that battery, I would happily buy it.
ticks plenty of your (and my) boxes, notably the pre-island thinkpad keyboard.
13" 3000x2000 screen, i7-10810u, 64gb ddr4
The audio is god awfull (for a product in that price range), lot of static with most earphones, have to use models with high impedance.
I found the linux experience subpar on this device (the cpu was running even hotter than on windows last time I tried).
Open source lives by participation, which doesn't happen if you have to pay for an Altium license as an entry fee. And even if free, proprietary vendors can always hold your design hostage.
Imho, this needs to be done in KiCAD.
This is the second time I've seen an altium post here in about a week, I wonder if they've hired an intern to do "community outreach"? I can't see it working with their lack of "hobbyist" support tbh.
Who is going to drop $4k/year for an Altium license to contribute to your open source project?!
I think people should start small and target an open motherboard first and foremost for the Framework, that way you don't have to design a whole laptop. It's very probable that the pioneer who care about that kind of thing are willing to buy or already own a Framework. A laptop with a small production is goind to be expensive anyways, better leverage the ecosystem.
A project like this should focus on their core mission, pick a simple & solid design, and _deliver_. The last thing they should be doing is distracting themselves with gimmicks; they said themselves how immensely tough this space is, even the most barebones of designs are enormously complex. There will be time for gimmicks once all the important stuff is done first.
What you see as gimmicks, this person sees as the entire point. The fact that "this space is so immensely tough" is exactly why they didn't already have what they wanted.
Having said that, a compare and contrast with the excellent work done by https://frame.work/ would be helpful.
Many open source laptops have come before and none really took off. My OLPC XO-1 sits in its bag, waiting...for a day that will probably never come.
Bunnie's Novena Laptop as mentioned in another comment, the Frameworks (which is probably the only one doing...OK, and it's not a Free Software laptop iirc), lots of other little laptop projects started and abandoned or fizzled out.
The best the Linux community has now is a bunch of rebadged Clevos, apparently. It's disheartening.
My OLPC XO-1 is still a daily-driver (with an HHKB, yeah I know the keyboard costs more than the laptop, tough!), especially for outside use.
https://mntre.com/ ^ MNT
Mostly fair, but what about Framework?
Framework laptops could be considered as open-source, but I am not convinced that I could understand the system much quicker than any other random laptop manufacturer
Or, well, just treat the row with the 6U key as an additional bottom row.
The Novena Open Laptop.