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
    2016-08-03T19:43:25+00:00

    There are many possibilities and one of them may be that more SP3's were manufactured with SIMPLO batteries than LG batteries. Hence we are seeing more users with SIMPLO reporting this issue.

    It's also possible that not all SP3's with SIMPLO batteries are affected. However, that would be strange because if it's some kind of firmware issue, wouldn't it make sense that ALL SP3's with SIMPLO batteries are affected?

    I also have SIMPLO battery with very low charge cycle number (~50) and don't have this issue YET.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-08-03T19:23:45+00:00

    We have both SIMPLO and LG users on this thread, so probably premature to say whether it is or isn't a problem with both types. Granted, though, that SIMPLO is dominantly a problem. Only thing to do is wait for MSFT to wake up and comment on what really is going on. And stop patronizing us the users.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-08-03T19:15:32+00:00

    Well, you may be having LG battery issues, but it's not the same issue as the SIMPLO batteries issue, this thread is about. Yours isn't charging to 100% for some reason. For SIMPLO batteries, 100% is an ever decreasing amount of milli-watt-hours, so they do reach 100%, it's just 100% of very little, instead of 100% of what the battery capacity should be.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-08-03T19:11:03+00:00

    did you go exploring in Windows.old to see if you could find your old report?

    >>The battery report (from "powercfg /batteryreport") has wiped out the historic information about battery capacity degredation. Other historic information is largely wiped out as well, although some basic information such as cycle count remains.

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