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
    2016-08-21T18:30:42+00:00

    Just my 2 cents.  I'm waiting for the "software" fix.  My SP3 in in it's dock and has been since the middle of July after I realized how short my battery life had become.  Looking at the batteryrpt, I initially thought that the degradation was only happening during off-charger use, but once I had plotted the capacity vs. time I realized that the capacity was declining even while in the dock on AC!  Note: The graph was plotted with 1-2-3 (I'm old school).![](http://fud.community.services.support.microsoft.com/Fud/FileDownloadHandler.ashx?fid=eb50a75f-1d28-4fd6-814b-db72ea634b7b)

    Also evident here are two earlier degradations that had mostly recovered until a new degradation started.

    When I try advanced power settings as shown in a previously helpful post, many of the "control features" are missing including those to set the SP3 to 65%.  Is this because I'm on 8.1?  I considered it stupid to upgrade to 10 in the middle of this battery mess.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-08-21T18:50:28+00:00

    An article today from businessinsider.com.  Too bad that he wasn't aware of the experience that hundreds/thousands of us are experiencing.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-panos-panay-history-microsoft-surface-2016-8

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-08-21T18:52:33+00:00

    Just my 2 cents.  I'm waiting for the "software" fix.  My SP3 in in it's dock and has been since the middle of July after I realized how short my battery life had become.  Looking at the batteryrpt, I initially thought that the degradation was only happening during off-charger use, but once I had plotted the capacity vs. time I realized that the capacity was declining even while in the dock on AC!  Note: The graph was plotted with 1-2-3 (I'm old school).![](http://fud.community.services.support.microsoft.com/Fud/FileDownloadHandler.ashx?fid=eb50a75f-1d28-4fd6-814b-db72ea634b7b)

    Also evident here are two earlier degradations that had mostly recovered until a new degradation started.

    When I try advanced power settings as shown in a previously helpful post, many of the "control features" are missing including those to set the SP3 to 65%.  Is this because I'm on 8.1?  I considered it stupid to upgrade to 10 in the middle of this battery mess.

    Not sure if the registry key is at the exact same location as windows 10 but to enable those power options, you have to run regedit.exe and change the following key value from 0x00000001 (1) to 0x00000000 (0):

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\CsEnabled

    ![](http://fud.community.services.support.microsoft.com/Fud/FileDownloadHandler.ashx?fid=b67eb7c8-245d-403d-9d81-da11d3f89584)

    Once done, just reboot the Surface Pro 3 and the extra power options should show up in advanced settings.

    HTH

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-08-21T22:23:05+00:00

    It can get even more weird:

    My battery capacity (LGC, 20 months old) actually went UP from 42157 to over 44.000mWh (Batteryrpt/BatteryBar/Battery Care) and a displayed wear level of 0%. However, the running time with regular office use (50% Word, 20% Outlook, 30% Firefox with some browsing at 50% display brightness and WLAN) is down to under 2 hours, and when the 10% warning pops up, the unit dies within 3 seconds, too quick to even do a regular hibernation shutdown.

    Microsoft please help!

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