Surface Pro 3 battery degradation

Anonymous

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.

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Anonymous

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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1,459 additional answers

Anonymous

2016-08-16T11:57:26+00:00

I was using a similar method (see my posts on page 66/August 10 in this thread) and had luck increasing my battery's full charge capacity. However after a few days with rising capacity it started decline again. The battery icon would say something like "99%, plugged in, not charging" and the charge had stopped a little short of the previous full charge. I was at nearly 21,000 mWh but now I'm back down to about 17,000.

I should mention I did not do any complete discharges of the battery, but recharged at various percentage levels. I may try to fully discharge a few times to see if I can get it back up again, but at this point I have pretty much accepted that I must wait for a proper solution.
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Anonymous

2016-08-16T14:18:30+00:00

I work in IT for a large company with about 160 users. We have probably 60+ users on the surface pro 3 and I have seen this exact issue about 4-5 times in the last year. You did the correct research running the powercfg and from what I have been able to find through my own digging and working with Microsoft customer support was that it was a battery issue. I understand that software may be involved, but with the affected Pro's I had tried completely wiping EVERYTHING off the surface and reinstalling windows and updating from the ground up and still had this same issue coming back. I had them all replaced through Microsoft advanced replacement (which was always super fast). We also had extended warranty's on all the surfaces we bought for the company so there was no extra cost associated.
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Anonymous

2016-08-16T16:17:59+00:00

I just recently (last 2 weeks) started experiancing the same issue everyone else has been reporting. After fully charging my Surface Pro 3 the battery only lasts about 45 minutes. I haven't installed anything new on my Surface except for the normal updates and the latest Office Suite. I can't imagine Office 2016 would cause this issue, but that and the normal updates is all that has been installed in the last 2 weeks (and I use it daily).
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Anonymous

2016-08-16T16:40:26+00:00

I made an appointment earlier today at a local Microsoft Store. I explained the dead battery and they gave me a replacement Surface Pro right away. It took about 15 minutes, and was no issue at all.

They mentioned they were familiar with the Windows Surface Pro 3 battery problems and replacing them as they came in.

Although I did have the Complete protection plan, he mentioned that this did not count towards that use because it was their problem.

So, I found great Microsoft customer service at the store.

It's a shame the forum is not represented by quality Microsoft customer service. They could have simply acknowledged the issue and told us the process for replacement.

If you can, go to your local store for resolution.
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