Surface Pro 3 battery degradation

Anonymous

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.

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Anonymous

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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1,459 additional answers

Anonymous

2016-08-16T16:17:59+00:00

I just recently (last 2 weeks) started experiancing the same issue everyone else has been reporting. After fully charging my Surface Pro 3 the battery only lasts about 45 minutes. I haven't installed anything new on my Surface except for the normal updates and the latest Office Suite. I can't imagine Office 2016 would cause this issue, but that and the normal updates is all that has been installed in the last 2 weeks (and I use it daily).
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Anonymous

2016-08-16T14:18:30+00:00

I work in IT for a large company with about 160 users. We have probably 60+ users on the surface pro 3 and I have seen this exact issue about 4-5 times in the last year. You did the correct research running the powercfg and from what I have been able to find through my own digging and working with Microsoft customer support was that it was a battery issue. I understand that software may be involved, but with the affected Pro's I had tried completely wiping EVERYTHING off the surface and reinstalling windows and updating from the ground up and still had this same issue coming back. I had them all replaced through Microsoft advanced replacement (which was always super fast). We also had extended warranty's on all the surfaces we bought for the company so there was no extra cost associated.
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Anonymous

2016-08-16T11:57:26+00:00

I was using a similar method (see my posts on page 66/August 10 in this thread) and had luck increasing my battery's full charge capacity. However after a few days with rising capacity it started decline again. The battery icon would say something like "99%, plugged in, not charging" and the charge had stopped a little short of the previous full charge. I was at nearly 21,000 mWh but now I'm back down to about 17,000.

I should mention I did not do any complete discharges of the battery, but recharged at various percentage levels. I may try to fully discharge a few times to see if I can get it back up again, but at this point I have pretty much accepted that I must wait for a proper solution.
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Anonymous

You had previously reported that nothing was working, so hopefully this is good news. From what I have seen, when the full charge capacity at the top of the battery report increases, it is real, e.g. the battery really holds more charge than previously. Also, when the battery capacity remaining in the recent usage section of the battery report shows greater than 100%, as in the table below, that also means the battery has recovered some of its lost charge capacity, even though the full charge capacity at the top of the report does not show the higher capacity yet. The report’s full charge capacity eventually catches up.

Recent usage

Power states over the last 3 days

2016-08-13 12:20:31	Active	Battery	18 %	5,814 mWh
12:55:08	Active	AC	7 %	2,409 mWh
13:33:17	Connected standby	AC	11 %	3,648 mWh
17:19:40	Active	AC	105 %	34,215 mWh
17:22:00	Active	Battery	105 %	34,215 mWh
17:31:27	Connected standby	Battery	105 %	34,215 mWh

The only way to know for certain whether the battery capacity has really improved is to see if the Surface Pro 3 operates longer on battery. After several weeks of declining battery life, a few weeks ago I started to see the full charge capacity in the battery report improve modestly after each discharge-recharge cycle. In most cases the improvement registered right away, but in some cases it showed flat at first and the battery capacity in the recent usage section showed greater than 100%. After several cycles, the improvement in battery life was noticeable. After many more cycles, it was substantial.

I do not have hibernate shut off as you do. If your surface is not plugged in, that would have the effect of draining the battery completely, or if Windows has a programmed hard stop independent of settings, then to that point. One thing I tried had much the same effect. I restarted my Surface on battery after it shut off automatically at low power, to try to drain the battery completely. I did this several times. On some attempts, it would not reboot, the surface just showed an empty battery icon, and I had to plug it in. On other attempts, it did reboot, and I ran it for several more minutes until it shut down again. I cannot say why it worked sometimes and not others.

I do not know whether to recommend that others try that. Windows eventually shuts down without a full power off or hibernate, or at least that’s what it appears to do, and at least once, I lost personal settings for one of my programs (that may or may not be related). On the other hand, draining the battery to true zero might have been the trigger event required to reset the battery driver to charge the battery to a higher total capacity. With a sample size of one, I cannot say for certain.

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