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
    2016-08-10T15:37:23+00:00

    Just to add my reply to this one, my surface pro 3 battery recharge hit a low of 9,794 about three weeks ago, useable for 45-60 minutes unplugged. Since then, I've been running my battery down to <10% whenever possible, then recharging it, either plugged in or in the dock, and battery capacity has recovered gradually. This morning's recharge hit 31,008, and the past few days my surface pro 3 lasts 3.5 - 4 hours on battery. Initially I shut it off whenever possible to recharge, but now I'm leaving it on when it recharges, it does not seem to matter at this point. What I have studiously avoided doing is plugging in the surface pro 3, or docking it, while it was discharging and only partially discharged. For reference, my surface pro 3 has an i7 processor, and the battery manufacturer is SIMPLO.

    Several other people on this thread have reported no luck running down their batteries and recharging, so something's got to be different. It is not possible to know for certain what that difference is, but one possibility might be specifically restarting the tablet, as mentioned in step 2 in the message I've replied to above. By default, Windows 10 is set to fast startup, shut down saves some state information to the hibernation file. However, fast startup does not impact restarts, so that should be a cleaner startup.

    Alternately, turn off Windows fast startup before shutting down. Instructions here: http://www.cnet.com/how-to/what-is-windows-10s-fast-startup/

    One other suggestion I have is that if you run a battery report, and notice that current information is clearly incorrect, shut everything down and restart immediately. I've seen two errors in battery reports. There is a report on page 43 of this thread, from August 2, showing the battery's design capacity way above normal, at 128,155 mWh as opposed to 42,157, for one week only. That obviously cannot be right. And in my own battery reports, several months ago, for a few weeks prior to the battery capacity declining, the report shows the total number of hours my surface pro 3 was running in a week well above the total number of hours actually in a week. The system was double or triple counting hours then. If something like that shows up in current info in the battery report, that clearly indicates a corrupted state, and while restart will not impact any data errors recorded as history, it might clear the error going forward.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-08-10T15:11:37+00:00

    I also purchased my SP in August 2014; it has the i5, not i7 and I don't have a docking station

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-08-10T15:03:58+00:00

    I can't even use my SP3 without being plugged in.  When is MS going to stand behind their products and fix this problem?

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-08-10T14:07:23+00:00

    @DatabaseJase asked again yesterday for an update on this. still no update from MS (just so you know we haven't forgotten) — Mary Jo Foley (@maryjofoley) August 10, 2016

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