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
    2016-07-29T18:24:39+00:00

    I am holding out hope, and the more I think about it, the more I think it may be possible to fix in software / firmware. Since we have now seen at least a few cases where the LG batts have seen some pretty significant capacity degradation as well, that might even point more to software vs bad battery cells. 

    There is some charging circuitry to charge the batt and communicate the battery status to windows. Battery chargers generally use some type of "voltage profile" to determine when a battery is nearing or has reached it's fully charged state. So if these batteries as they normally degrade from use start to exhibit a slightly different profile, the charging firmware might be too sensitive to some normal condition of an older battery, thus giving a "false positive" of fully charged status. That type of thing could certainly be fixed in firmware.

    Also, as far as more modern batteries go, the manufacturing is pretty consistent overall, and "bad" batteries from a batch might degrade quicker or have less overall capacity, but it seems unlikely there would be a large batch, especially across at least 2 MFRs now, that would show this huge cliff drop within a short few months.

    I have a slight hunch that maybe the charging circuitry might even take into account the "expected max" based on previous charge cycles, and that might explain why it would keep dropping so fast. Who knows, I am just speculating.

    But the one cool thing about this issue is, that with the included powercfg /batteryreport tool we are all using to report our findings - we have a smoking gun to display EXACTLY when and how bad our issue is. So there is no way the company or any support person can deny that this is WAY outside normal wear and tear. There is nothing subjective about it when their own tool is telling them exactly what we are seeing!

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-07-29T17:11:06+00:00

    So, Microsoft uses these devices to compete against the iPad in the education space.  Imagine if you were the decision maker at a school district that was going to buy thousands of devices for classroom use seeing these types of problems and the response leaving customers swinging in the wind.  These were not designed to be a 1 year throw-away.  But, of course, those folks are under a software agreement and likely some type of warranty or service agreement.  Microsoft needs to fix this soon not only for the existing customers, like those of us on the forum here, but to salvage their reputation in the corporate and pub sector area too.  They need to understand the potential cost not only to address these very visible issues but also the loss of sales going forward.

    Hopefully, the crickets response we are getting will end and a suitable solution will be offered.  Somebody at the GM level or above needs to understand that this is not an accounting decision, it's a reputation decision.

    I will be very impressed "IF" Microsoft really fix this issue with a firmware update.

    Remember Microsoft said about 2 years ago that they were going to release a fix for the jitter diagonal lines of the surface pen by increasing the voltage?!

    Microsoft....we haven't forgot that.....and we are all still waiting.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-07-29T16:55:38+00:00

    So, Microsoft uses these devices to compete against the iPad in the education space.  Imagine if you were the decision maker at a school district that was going to buy thousands of devices for classroom use seeing these types of problems and the response leaving customers swinging in the wind.  These were not designed to be a 1 year throw-away.  But, of course, those folks are under a software agreement and likely some type of warranty or service agreement.  Microsoft needs to fix this soon not only for the existing customers, like those of us on the forum here, but to salvage their reputation in the corporate and pub sector area too.  They need to understand the potential cost not only to address these very visible issues but also the loss of sales going forward.

    Hopefully, the crickets response we are getting will end and a suitable solution will be offered.  Somebody at the GM level or above needs to understand that this is not an accounting decision, it's a reputation decision.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-07-29T16:34:34+00:00

    The recent firmware update is not going to fix the issue. They still have yet to announce the actual fix, but I am hoping something will be done by the Aug 9th normal patch day. My SP3 is basically a useless brick right now.

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