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

2016-08-22T04:12:02+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!

This is also my problem! In addition: shortly after charging I can get an unrealistically high expected battery life indication (>15 hours, I have even seen 20 hours)! Silly....

I will wait for the software fix. If that doesn't resolve it I will head back to my supplier.
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Anonymous

2016-08-22T06:19:38+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!

This is also my problem! In addition: shortly after charging I can get an unrealistically high expected battery life indication (>15 hours, I have even seen 20 hours)! Silly....

I will wait for the software fix. If that doesn't resolve it I will head back to my supplier.

Pretty encouraging news then. It may be a yet another typical sign of software defect.
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Anonymous

2016-08-22T12:47:31+00:00

Has anybody been able to get a refund for paying the $450 for a replacement? I am trying to figure out if there are steps I can take for this, that do not require me paying another $99 to talk to a support agent. Thanks!
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Anonymous

2016-08-22T14:05:23+00:00

Do they charge you guys for online support chat initiated from MS site as well? Try that.

By the way what kind of nonsense is charging a Franklin for talking to a big *** corporation regarding a problem that they have created?????????
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