Surface Pro 4 Bulging Battery / Screen. 3 1/2 years old.

Anonymous
2019-06-30T14:34:09+00:00

So, like many others on this forum, we have a Surface Pro 4, in which the battery has decided to self-destruct, destroying a £1,700 machine.

The screen hasn't popped off, but the battery has swollen enough to prevent the hinge from opening as it should and for the glass on the front to be very distorted, and it registers random screen input, all the while running hotter than the central heating.

I've spoken to support. They unhelpfully told me that because my warranty is up, I would have to pay several hundred pounds (£333) to replace the machine with a refurbished unit. To me, this is completely unacceptable. These devices are clearly flawed by design. This issue is too wide spread for it to be a coincidence. The batteries used in these devices are obviously flawed, and when I suggested as such, Sean L, the person dealing with my case, stopped responding (A few days after that, I wrote to Microsoft's twitter support who confirmed that the case had been closed. Thanks Sean L.)

If the device is dangerous (as suggested by the agent who I spoke to on the phone in the first instance) and it does catch fire while we are away this summer, and it subsequently burns down a multi-million pound Cambridge University building? What then, Microsoft? You'll wish you'd just replaced it then, won't you.

Surface | Surface Pro | Power and battery

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-08-10T22:52:40+00:00

    Yes,  my device is about to die as well.  Looking at the yoga c940 as well.

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-08-10T20:31:42+00:00

    It just truly boggles my mind how our tax dollars are spent. Why isn't the state attorney general fighting this?

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-08-10T20:28:43+00:00

    I wish I could have been there to watch you beat that thing with a hammer, I would have been cheering you on! Maybe one day I'll need to do that to mine but I am fighting Microsoft tooth and nail with documentation that is publicly available and since I filed a complaint with the Consumer Product Safety Commission that Microsoft is trying to charge me money to fix a defective product that could explode AND they are trying to send me another defective product that could explode because they have not had the defective battery replaced I was told to hold on to the item until they get this cleared up.

    Cheers

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-08-10T20:12:23+00:00

    Hi CharlesHill4 and Community

    ",

    My device "WAS" (hahaha) a surface pro 4 I7 high end model which I spent a lot of hard earned money for. It actually still worked when I "DESTROYED IT". Prior to destruction, I closely analyzed the pro 4 and realized there was no way the back could open, but I was already in the I don't give a SH#% mindset, so I began prying the screen, where it was already bulged up, I was able to overcome the adhesive for the entire bulged side, then of course the screen shattered, as this was the expected and inevitable outcome.

    Being able to see what the inside looked like was very interesting and closer analysis reinforced my belief that the surface pro 4 is a disposable device. The way the pro 4 was assembled with the screen glued makes it impossible to ever open it for any sort of repair or modification. I ripped the copper bars out to add to my recycling efforts, beat the heck out of the rest of it with a hammer, and threw it in the garbage. Personal therapy regarding this issue. LOL!

    I am drafting this response on my new Lenovo Yoga C940. So far so good. Hopefully if enough people voice their disgust with this situation Microsoft will do something. (Don't hold your breath)

    There are many things in life like this that just sucks, but we have to do what we need to get past it and move forward. Here's a quote I heard......

    "When the waves of life are crashing down on you, don't drown, learn to surf!"

    Have a great day!

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  5. Anonymous
    2020-08-10T19:31:02+00:00

    I work for state government and our entire development team has Surface Pro 4 and out of the 6 that we have, 2 have batteries that are causing the screens to swell; one in particular today (making that 3) has totally separated at the hinge area. The applications that we run on the machine at one time are: 

    PhpStorm - up to 4 different projects (windows) opened

    Docker

    One Drive - with 365 license (All of the IT staff had to turn this off because the CPU is always 100% while doing development and the Surface is difficult to touch because of the heat)

    Outlook

    Firefox or Chrome for php, javascript debugging

    Microsoft Teams 

    That's pretty much all we run daily at a minimum and the surfaces are always hot. With OneDrive turned off CPU usage averages around 87% - 92% with PHPStorm having the highest CPU percentage with only 1 project open. Opening more project increases to close to 100% usage on a daily basis.

    We have tried to return them the moment we noticed the keyboard cover doesn't lay flat. But we were refused through Microsoft Support from returning them right when the screen started acting up. Now one by one our development team (working from home) have to travel to the office during COVID-19 crisis to grab and configure a desktop computer to take home for remote work.

    There are a lot of Surfaces at the State Surplus, I mean lots of them.

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