Surface Pro 3 battery degradation

Anonymous
2016-05-11T07:37:37+00:00

I've been using Microsoft Surface Pro 3 for a year, and shortly after the warranty expired I noticed my Surface Pro 3 can only last about 1-2 hours after a full charge. At first I thought this was a problem with background process draining the battery so I disabled everything running in the background. It didn't helped. Then I found out about the powercfg utility and run powercfg /batteryreport on it, and this was the result:

A full charge capacity has degraded by over 80% in just few weeks and continue degrading. I tried to "recalibrate" the battery by doing full charge then full drain multiple times, and it didn't helped. Talk with Microsoft via chat support and they insist this was a software problem and reinstalled the driver and asked me to wait few days to see if things improve. Not only it didn't improved, but now my Surface can only last 30 minutes.

Few days after chat (today), I called Microsoft support and they were being extremely unhelpful. Insist that this was a software problem (which the chat support person already did) and it's "perfectly normal" for battery capacity to degrade. I insist that I've already done the software "fixes" and it didn't work and tell them this is definitely hardware problem, but the person on the phone tell me there's nothing I could do except to order the out of warranty exchange (which cost about $560 in my local currency). 

Is there anything else I should do? My country has no Microsoft Store which I could take the machine for them to take a look. Phone/online support were the only option, and none of them could understand the issue.

Surface | Surface Pro | Power and battery

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Anonymous
2016-07-26T21:31:16+00:00

Hello everyone,

Thanks for your continued patience here. We have now completed our testing of the update and it has passed our quality assurance process.

The update, “System Firmware Update - 8/29/2016”, is now available to install from Windows Update.

Before installing this update, ensure that your Surface Pro 3 is plugged directly in to AC power using the standard AC power adapter (do not use the Surface Docking Station), disconnect any USB devices or external monitors, and check that Windows shows a 40% charge or greater when you hover over the icon in the taskbar before you begin.

Once you install the update, please select Restart now (do not shutdown). After your Surface restarts, please manually restart it a second time to complete the process. For more information, please see our Surface Pro 3 Battery FAQ article.

If you’re having trouble charging your Surface, you get a low-battery error, or your Surface turns off when you unplug it, the steps in our Surface battery won’t charge article can help you pinpoint the problem. Should you need any further assistance, please contact us. 

Thanks again.

Greg

Updated 8/29/16.

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-08-30T12:05:25+00:00

    looks like the problem still persist with LGC LGC batteries... oh my..... for those who is with LGC LGC batteries, I think  you should group together to tell the problem to Microsoft Greg. the problem might still persist for LGC LGC batteries. the patch may only have solve the problem for SIMPLO batteries only.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-08-30T12:03:53+00:00

    Very interesting, because they have the same capacity as you. I think I set the battery degradation. Microsoft did not want to give us the full capacity of the battery.

    Does anyone really believe these conspiracy theories?  Why would Microsoft do such a thing?

    I have a big issue with how this #BatteryGate incident was handled by Microsoft in terms of the length of time to provide a fix and the lack of information flowing from them.  I do not believe for one minute that Microsoft intentionally caused the software fault in an attempt to sell new hardware.  The damage done to the Surface brand over this will take months, maybe years, to recover with many business people posting in these pages how they have stopped purchasing Surface devices for their employees.

    Microsoft is a business and any practice of building in obsolescence can only ever be counter productive to their business goals.  The SP3 I have is a business purchase and believe me it will be a while before I make another Surface purchase but it isn't because I feel they did this deliberately.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-08-30T11:50:33+00:00

    Have you applied the update and restarted (twice)?  Did you at any point before installing the update delete the battery driver?  If you did I'd suggest doing so again and then restarting the device to let it be detected.

    You might have to keep running the battery down so that it can charge again from empty.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-08-30T11:47:59+00:00

    Very interesting, because they have the same capacity as you. I think I set the battery degradation. Microsoft did not want to give us the full capacity of the battery.

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