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
    2016-08-06T20:26:28+00:00

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-08-06T20:22:13+00:00

    Greg,

    I hope MS's lack of communication is because every person in the org is working on the problem non-stop, but I know that to be untrue. My system is now randomly entering sleep while docked.

    Basically useless now...

    ![](http://fud.community.services.support.microsoft.com/Fud/FileDownloadHandler.ashx?fid=8acba054-9739-493a-a3b2-dc4fec568b3b)

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-08-06T19:43:56+00:00

    It was the know how number  0344 800 9090

    I cant remember the names as it was 6 months ago all I have here is the phone number and the ref number i was given if there were any problems with the payment 

    the first person I spoke to was female ,who told me that i needed to get an independant report on it 

    the next day   I phoned to tell them no one would touch it for repair, I got a male  who told me he had dealt with a few and agreed they are a sealed unit and the battery could not  be replaced 

    .

    he said he would phone me back , and an  offer was made 15 mins later ,

    I then got a phonecall from the finance department the next day with the payment details

    when you phone them tell them  your complaining under the sale of goods act as you are covered for at least 2 years under that EU law

    some things are covered for longer under that act but it definitely   covers computers for 2 years

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-08-06T19:13:41+00:00

    This is almost definitely a software problem.  Battery life was over 35000mWh in mid July - now down to barely 500 mWh.   If it didn't cripple my use of my Surface Pro 3 it would be comical.  The problems for me seemed to start with the July 21st BIOS update.  The newest BIOS update (August 1 I think) didn't fix matters.  If there was a way to force a re-calibration of the battery that would seem a good fix unless this is a problem with the  ACPI driver. Very frustrating since by all indications I have a good battery but my charger won't charge it because it thinks is only has 500mWh capacity.

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