I know system76 has had their own laptop designs in the works for a while now, I wonder how that’s going… being tethered to Clevo is kneecapping them in a few ways IMO.
And here they talk about what they learned working on the Chromebook version: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32927094 that they've been working on in the latest (beta currently) BIOS updates: https://community.frame.work/t/12th-gen-intel-core-bios-3-06...
For anyone interested, you can take a look at their community forums - they're doing as much Linux support as anyone else out there I think: https://community.frame.work/
The LG gram has a few things going for it:
* Soldered LPDDR memory is lower power than SODIMMs
* Not having the extra retimer, not needing it to be active unless the TB4 port is used
* A lower res display (1920x1200)
* A 72Wh battery, which is 30% bigger than the 55Wh in the Framework
That being said, LG (and other ODM/OEMs) have been making laptops for almost 20 years, and Framework is on year two on basically their first design, so it's probably to be expected that they have some stuff to learn/improve.
In any case, I'm incredibly pleased with mine, the battery life really is fantastic and knowing it can be this good is probably the only reason a framework wouldn't be my next laptop.
I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone at Framework is hacking on Linux and upstreaming drivers that implement efficient power management correctly. I also don't think they're hacking on custom firmware for components, either.
Looks like System76, for example, puts a lot of work in to get white label Clevo laptops working pretty well with Linux. Framework is likely working with whatever the kernel already supports, and often times it's hard to implement good power management for components because the documentation isn't available, so you're lucky if someone spent time trying to reverse engineer anything at all.
Also conjecture: I don't think Framework is designing low-level hardware, either, and the boards they design/buy aren't optimized for power saving versus actually shipping a product.
I'd assume that LG has more resources dedicated to power efficiency when it comes to time, money and manpower, and they have kernel hackers on their payroll, as they roll and deploy their own Linux-based OS.
It could also just be chance, where the LG gram just happens to be built with well supported components.