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
    2016-08-10T08:22:30+00:00

    This is exactly what I did after I wrote the post:

    Starting point: full capacity 19,319 mWh, battery 100%

    1. Plugged out the power, use on battery until 10%.
    2. Restarted Surface and plugged in power, used it as normal while charging until 100% (actually 101% according to BatteryInfoView) - full capacity reached 19,650 mWh
    3. Plugged out power, used it on battery for a while until I went to bed. Only pressed the sleep button this time.
    4. Plugged in and turned it on, battery was about 65%
    5. Charged until full (101,6%), full charge capacity is now 20,003 mWh

    Looks like this time it didn't make a difference if I let the battery go to 10% or 65%, the gain in mWh is almost the same. I'll try a few of these cycles today with different levels of battery discharge.

    edit: Left out that I restarted the Surface in 2)

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-08-10T06:15:37+00:00

    I have tried to contact the uk legal team but my email got sent to global escalation in the US.

    So I am hoping that anybody with experiance of proscuting  a uk small claim via the courts can offer some advice. I beleive there is enough evidance in this thread to demostrate that the warrenty repair should have been free.

    Any help gratefully received

    Simon

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-08-10T01:20:54+00:00

    Hello Greg,

    Thank you.  Do you have an update?

    My fully charged capacity plunged two weeks ago from 30k mWh to 4k mWh and it now lasts 7 minutes when charger is disconnected.

    thanks,

    joseph

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-08-10T00:58:05+00:00

    hi, can you let me know how you do it? I tried to use the following steps :

    1. discharge to about 40%
    2. switch off surface pro 3
    3. allow it to charge to full (at least I think it's full) - put in on charging for at least 2 hours since it is at 40% battery level
    4. leave it overnight unplugged and switched off
    5. turn it on in the morning

    To my surprise the battery wear level is even worst than before. I didn't recover any, but it has gotten worst....

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