Surface Pro 4, Screen Flickering, Shaking

Anonymous

Hi All,

Update: Flickergate is now having a forum to bring all affected users at a single platform to plan for resolvement of issue. Please join at

https://forum.flickergate.com

UPDATE: Check FlickerGate.com for videos of the problem and to submit your own.

I purchased SP4 device a few months ago and it was working fine for a month. Then I noticed that when the CPU is at its max, the screen flickers a bit. Investigating further revealed that it flickers even if it is setting idle. It does not flicker if at least one of the following thing is done:

A video being played in browser
If I keep the touch screen busy by either taping it or keeping a finger on it
If I use the touchpad
If keyboard is used for typing

This resulted in making the device completely unusable while reading articles or ebooks. I am a developer, most of the time I have to read the code and to do that, I have to constantly keep a finger on the touch pad or the screen. I contacted surface support in October and November and was told that the developers are working on the patch. Looking at the updates the developers are pushing since then, I don't think anyone is even aware of the problem there.

My previous support ticket numbers are:

***deleted personally identifiable information***

Just wondering if anyone else had the same problem (and the fix) and if not, what's the procedure for the refund? I will rather go for a mac then sacrificing $2000+ for a dancing screen.

Kind Regards,

Abbas

***Personal information deleted by the moderator. Please see the Microsoft Community Frequently Asked Questions for more information on how you can protect your privacy.***

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous

Hey Everyone,

Creating the best products and experiences for our customers is our top priority.

We have heard your feedback and after careful examination, have determined that a small percentage of Surface Pro 4 devices are exhibiting a screen flicker that cannot be addressed with a firmware or driver update.

To support customers affected by this issue, we will replace eligible Surface Pro 4 devices for up to three years from the date of purchase, free of charge. If you believe your device is experiencing this issue, please visit our Surface Pro 4 screen flicker article for more details.

Bryan [MSFT]

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2,779 additional answers

Anonymous

2017-05-13T22:11:06+00:00

Maybe the distinct lack of response from Microsoft is a sign that they're waiting for the Surface Pro 5 to be released so they can replace all of our faulty SP4's...
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Anonymous

2017-05-13T22:45:51+00:00

I really don't think that is going to happen, but one can only dream.
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Anonymous

2017-05-14T08:19:48+00:00

It would be worthy, I think that replacing the device with SP5, this will change anger at mercy!
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Anonymous

2017-05-15T12:49:57+00:00

The problem with this is that its a software issue not a hardware issue. If you screen keeps displaying a continuos motion the flickering wouldn't appear but if the screen keeps rendering the same exact frame for the next few seconds, the flickering starts at least that's how I experienced it that's why when opening task manager with the cpu usage graph, the flickering stops as the device needs to render a different frame every second which prevents the flickering from happening. I suspect that this is a software issue as several windows updates did fix this issue but updating things like the security updates may have caused the problems to reignite again.
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