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
    2016-08-16T23:40:03+00:00

    Fellow Microsoft victims:

    Jump into the comments on Paul's puff piece of Surface vs iPad Pro.  Not enough people are hearing of how we have been ripped off by Microsoft.  Admittedly, he is a Microsoft hack, but I know for a fact that people within MSFT read his stuff.

    Find it here:

    https://www.thurrott.com/hardware/76320/microsoft-starts-hit-back-ipad-pro-new-surface-commercial

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-08-17T00:13:17+00:00

    Fellow Microsoft victims:

    Jump into the comments on Paul's puff piece of Surface vs iPad Pro.  Not enough people are hearing of how we have been ripped off by Microsoft.  Admittedly, he is a Microsoft hack, but I know for a fact that people within MSFT read his stuff.

    Find it here:

    https://www.thurrott.com/hardware/76320/microsoft-starts-hit-back-ipad-pro-new-surface-commercial

    Wow. That's quite a short and snappy advert from microsoft... it might even be possible for some SP3 users to watch it all before their batteries run out of juice (well... those that are actually able to boot their devices have a slim chance of at least watching some of it).

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-08-17T01:15:28+00:00

    ![](http://fud.community.services.support.microsoft.com/Fud/FileDownloadHandler.ashx?fid=bbbb797f-9538-45ed-8caf-23bd67011329)

    This is my battery history. I only started the method on 12 August 2016 and hoping that it will keep on increasing. I realize that the "full charged capacity"is only reset after you shutdown your sp3 or hibernate the sp3. and the full charged capacity will reset to whatever the last mWh when you fully charged it to.

    This morning when I fully charged my sp3, it only went up to 98.8 percent before it stops charging. Therefore I'm still not sure whether this works, it's just a test I'm trying to do to avoid to have the full charged capacity drop like crazy.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-08-17T02:05:42+00:00

    On the other hand, I'm out of the country with an iPad Pro and my battery is still at 50% or so after finishing the whole day of constantly using it. It's not as powerful as the Surface, but at least I can turn it on without plugging it to the wall and could accomplish most of my day to day task on it (except coding).

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