Surface Pro 3 LGC Battery Degradation

Split from this thread.

Anyone else getting the black "Trusted Platform Module" startup screen as well? I'm getting it randomly on reboot, it won't respond, can't exit out, but if hold down power button, I can eventually get it to boot up (plugged in of course). This one has the LG battery, surprisingly - seems most others are having problems with the other battery. I pasted the entire battery report below. It looks like something happened October 3rd? I'm going to go back through all the logs & updates to see if I can find anything from that date. 

Man... that's bloody awful.

I'm just hoping that my SP3 can last until SP5 comes out. My uncle and cousin are using SP4 and has been issue free. Of course I was using SP3 issue free until that battery update...

Okay - first of all I want to thank Barb for going out of her way to try to help me.  Thank you very much Barb - I really do appreciate it.  I had posted my issue with a SP3 that I purchased, unaware at the time that it had a defective battery.  I am convinced at this point, that the battery IS defective - hardware-wise, not in terms of the software.  Barb helped me get in touch with some higher up techs at microsoft.  Initially, I was really excited because I received an email that stated "you have been identified as having a 'device of interest'"....the email went on to say that they would like to work with me to help fix the problem and if it could not be fixed, swap out "at no charge to you."

So, after that initial email and a few more back and forth, where I explained that I had discovered that my SP3 had actually been identified already as defective, and that the initial owner had sent in for an advance replacement when it was still under warranty, then SOLD this one fraudulently, after receiving the replacement, whereupon the person HE sold it to at a trade show sold it to me for about $1000.....It had hardly been used, which probably should have been a red flag - when I received it, it was about a year and 4 months old, and had gone through only 100 charge cycles.  In any case, the techs were very helpful, I thought, and all the while I was feeling assured that if a software fix could not be found, it would be replaced "at no cost [to me]".....so, I was sent a few different updates, and for around a week or so the battery suddenly stopped heating up like crazy (this is another thing - the SP3 heats up a LOT, very quickly, and I have never once heard the fan come on - it is an intel i7, so I think that the cooling system just does not work at all) - anyway, for about a week or so, no over-heating, and I actually was getting about 4 hours of battery life!  I informed the techs.  After sending them a few battery reports, I asked if, should this fix not be permanent, would I be able to have it swapped out, as I had been told? Incredibly dissapointed, because the next email I received included the phrase "as this is a KNOWN issue, we will not be able to swap the device out at no charge, out of warranty."

So, the "fix" worked for a few days, and now I am getting less and less battery life, but of course, the battery report falsely indicates something other than that - also, the device is over-heating like crazy again.  At this point I am KICKING myself for not purchasing a Lenovo Thinkpad with wacom digitizer and windows 10 pro - I even looked into the possibility of trading thnis device in - that is another sore point with me - Microsoft is not willing to pay more than a couple hundred bucks on a trade in for their top of the line, $2500.00 (brand new with type face cover etc.) SP3 intel i7! 

Anyway, I am only venting, that is all - I have come around to the understanding that Microsoft will never do anything for someone like me, who purchased an out of warranty device privately, even though it IS defective - because there simply are not enouygh ppl with this issue - at least, that is what I am thinking.  In any case, my only hope is to try and get my money back from the person I bought this from, or sell it myself, to some unsuspecting person - which I do not think I could do.  Whay really gets me is that Microsoft makes so much profit off these machines, and in my case, this particular device was ALREADY replaced because it IS defective, yet they will not at this point admit that it is a hardware issue - it is simplly a "known issue".......no more surface for me again ever!!! unfortunately, all I can do now is continue to use this device and hope to **** that ithe battery does not swell and vent or explode, and save up for a Lenovo yoga, and on the day I am able to get one, smash this one to bits.

Thanks again, Barb, for trying to help - I really do appreciate what you did :)

I have two SP3's. One is completely dead. I posted in this thread about it before.

The second SP3 has been thus far okay. Runs for hours on battery. No reliability issues at all. However the battery report tells another story. I extracted the battery capacity history data and put it on a graph:

(NB: the sudden steps between 3 Sep - 3 Oct are because the battery report gives a weekly average rather than a day-by-day for old data)

What this says is that it is quietly losing about 2Wh of battery capacity a month. This means that after about 8 months I will be down to 50% of the original capacity and after 14 months down to 10%.

Sadly I didn't start looking at the battery report until recently so I can't pinpoint when the degradation started but it MUST have been in the last month or two because as you can see this time last month my battery was reporting 1.5Wh ABOVE the design capacity.

So I suppose what I'm saying in summary is that even SP3s that appear to be healthy may not be and whatever happened in the past couple of months could have put a death sentence on all SP3s.

A second thought on this. Does/Has anyone dual boot to Ubuntu? Perhaps Ubuntu will charge the battery. I dont want to waste the time if anyone is already dual booting.

Please let me know.