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
    2016-08-17T17:47:09+00:00

    I just purchased a Dell. This thing is practically unusable.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-08-17T17:48:14+00:00

    if you plug it in, no peripherals attached, NOT docked, can you boot and use it

    or not?

    >>I'm fully bricked now

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-08-17T18:00:36+00:00

    Update on my SP3:

    • About 2 weeks ago my battery would drain in about 20-30 minutes, tops. Battery report showed 8,000mWh.
    • Last night I tried unplugging it to see what would happen. I watched the battery state on the tray icon go 100-95-85-80-70 and then shut down hard in about 6 seconds flat! Battery report now shows 1400mWh.

    It still works while plugged in for now, so I made sure to do a backup last night to an external drive.

    Luckily for me, I bought a 3rd party extended warranty through SquareTrade which is still in effect. But I will hold out a little longer as that would likely get me a refurb unit with a new battery, which may or may not get the issue again, and I will have $450 less value on my extended warranty. Hopefully MS can get their S&%T together and communicate something to us!

    Also would like to give a shout out to SquareTrade warranties. I have bought a few in the past on various devices and have filed claims with them a few times with great results every time, no haggling. It's usually longer and better covered than the factory extended warranties, while being a little cheaper as well. If I end up using it this time around as well I will report back how they handle it.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-08-17T18:03:27+00:00

    I will personally committing time to write bad reviews on as many sites as I can. We must make the surface brand synonymous with bad batteries and poor customer service. It will remain that way for me at least until microsoft can get my $2000 brick working again.

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