Yup. It's likely a completely fixable software issue but they don't care.
Surface Pro 9 won't enter tablet mode after disconnecting the type cover
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Anonymous
So it's been two days of back and forward with customer support and cannot get a resolution on this issue. Bought a brand new Surface Pro 9 and out of the box have had issues with basic functionality. Initially we thought that the auto rotation was janky but eventually discovered that we could boot up the device without keyboard attached and tablet mode worked great, but once we connected the type cover keyboard and then removed it, the device stays in desktop mode. I've reinstalled a fresh version of the OS three times, run all Windows updates, downloaded and installed the Surface Pro 9 drivers from the Microsoft site, done the 20 second power down... none of it makes any difference.
Anyone have any advice? If I can't solve this I will need to return and repurchase etc, which means I may just go elsewhere, this has been a pretty poor user experience and I was pretty excited for this purchase. Hoping to get some help, much appreciated 🙏
Surface | Surface Pro | Display and screen
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Anonymous
2023-05-23T22:35:10+00:00 -
Anonymous
2023-05-23T22:01:52+00:00 The most annoying thing: Microsoft seems not to care
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Anonymous
2023-05-23T21:21:18+00:00 My brand-new-just-unboxed-device has the same issue. Spent a lot of time troubleshooting and discovered that if I connect or disconnect power to it after removing the keyboard, it also goes into touch mode, just like the mentioned power off/on trick. Seems like the power state change makes it detect correct state. Extremely annoying.
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Anonymous
2023-05-16T20:28:14+00:00 Marrion_Y - is this issue getting escalated to the Surface Pro development team for triage and resolution? Clearly it's a general problem affecting many or all users that wants to use Surface Pro 9 as a combined laptop and tablet, and it would serve Microsoft best to confirm the issue and that work has started on a resolution.
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Anonymous
2023-05-16T16:56:18+00:00 I too can confirm this issue with my Surface Pro 9!
As others, I already had the first SP9 and returned it again for a refund, after online support gave up fixing the issue - we tried everything mentioned here, including running diagnostics, reinstalling drivers and reinstalling Windows 11, all with no results. So concluding it was a hardware issue, rather than getting a refurbished SP9 back as the repair, I returned the device. Immediately afterwards buying another new SP9 expecting it to be an individual hardware error, but found the new one had exact same issue right on first usage.
Can also confirm the mentioned workarounds that are impractical and goes against the whole reason of buying a Surface Pro as a 2-in-1 device of laptop and tablet. Either flipping the keyboard backwards first before removing to trigger the tablet mode. Or switching the SP9 to standby or hibernate and turning it back on will make it go into tablet mode, if the keyboard is not attached when resuming. So definitely, the device can detect the keyboard has been removed - as also confirmed by one other post of device manager showing the removal of two keyoard devices.
One new thing I can add is, that I had a fully working Surface Pro 8 to compare and test with also. Swapping keyboards back and forth between the two confirmed, that neither keyboard would trigger tablet mode on removal on the SP9, and both keyboards would trigger it on the SP8, confirming the issue is with the tablet or software / drivers, and not with the keyboard.
Received my second SP9 yesterday and now torn if I should return that also for a refund, unless there's very quickly a very strong statement this issue is recognized, reproducible and will be corrected ASAP. This functionality is core to why I chose a Surface Pro over other device types.