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
    2016-08-04T15:53:03+00:00

    are these docked most of the time?

    Yes they are dock 90% of the time.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-08-04T14:57:44+00:00

    I have the SIMPLO battery issue with my Surface Pro 3 i5 and was able to upgrade to the Windows Anniversary Upgrade.

    The only change that I have noticed is that powercfg /batteryreport no longer produces a detailed history for any of usage, battery capacity, or battery life estimate which is an exceptionally disappointing change as it just hides the what was a very clear picture of degradation starting in April.  At least I had saved a previous version (shown below).  

    I am also exceptionally frustrated that I don't appear to be able to even log this issue without paying $99 even though my warranty only expired in mid June and the problem obviously started well before that.

    Battery capacity history [July 28 report]

    Charge capacity history of the system's batteries

    2015-12-06 - 2015-12-15 42,074 mWh 42,157 mWh
    ... ... ...
    2016-03-20 - 2016-03-27 42,560 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-03-27 - 2016-04-03 40,748 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-04-03 - 2016-04-11 37,577 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-04-11 - 2016-04-17 33,700 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-04-17 - 2016-04-24 30,962 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-04-24 - 2016-05-01 32,270 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-05-01 - 2016-05-08 29,451 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-05-08 - 2016-05-16 26,940 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-05-16 - 2016-05-26 23,297 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-05-26 - 2016-06-03 19,942 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-06-03 - 2016-06-10 19,900 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-06-10 - 2016-06-17 18,218 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-06-17 - 2016-06-24 17,558 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-06-24 - 2016-07-01 16,997 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-07-01 - 2016-07-08 16,070 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-07-08 - 2016-07-15 13,099 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-07-16 10,579 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-07-17 10,579 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-07-18 10,579 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-07-19 10,143 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-07-20 8,519 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-07-21 8,322 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-07-22 8,322 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-07-23 8,322 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-07-24 8,322 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-07-25 8,230 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-07-26 7,942 mWh 42,157 mWh
    2016-07-27 6,853 mWh 42,157 mWh

    Battery capacity history [full Aug 4 report!]

    Charge capacity history of the system's batteries

    2016-08-03 5,138 mWh 42,157 mWh

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-08-04T14:50:39+00:00

    Received this message from Microsoft after calling into Customer support. I explained that I would not pay the $99 for the call since this was a known issue. After confirming that my SP3 had a SIMPLO battery at full charge with 144mWh and I had already done all the suggested diagnostics, the support person offered 2 options, 1) paying $450 for an exchange which would be the fastest option or 2) waiting for Microsoft to come up with a solution, which is a top priority for their surface team.

    160731

    Good day!

    Thank you for the response.

    I apologize if you still encounter the same issue. I understand where you are coming from. No worries, this has been reported so rest assured that our Engineering Team will be working on this closely. We will let you know via email on whatever progress we may have for this issue.

    Once again, thank you for reporting this to us and I really do apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-08-04T13:43:02+00:00

    I spoke to a nice Lady from Microsoft Global Escalation Services yesterday, who was responding to a email I sent to Microsoft.

    I think Microsoft had thought that I was a business with a lot of devices and wanted to gather more information from me.

    What I had asked in my email and repeated by phone was that everyone in the UK who had already paid for an out of Warranty replacement due to the SIMPLO battery was refunded their out of warranty fee, otherwise I will pursue my case via the UK Courts for my money back. In the UK it is harder to launch a class action, but easier to lodge a small claim for up to a few thousand pounds with little work required.

    So the nice lady from Microsoft was gathering information, and was not in a position to provide me with information.

    However I do take a lot of comfort from having received contact from Microsoft over this.

    I suppose any sort of feedback is a start, but Microsoft need to do MUCH better.

    There are reports on this site from February / March this year that show these exact same failures. That is 6 months during which those users have been unable to use their tablet computers as advertised and during which there has been no formal response or fix provided by Microsoft. Stating that they cannot provide information because they are still gathering information after 6 months of reported failures is unacceptable.

    It should also be clearly remembered that the Microsoft surface team posted this statement on reddit to clarify the quality of the batteries: "it can be charged five days a week for more than 4.5 years while maintaining 80% capacity." Again, as this comes directly from public statements made by the surface team, these computers are clearly not working as advertised.

    At the moment, with no response as to how this issue is to be resolved, this amounts to mis-selling of the product and not simply a case of lack of support.

    Microsoft need to take this VERY seriously.

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