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.

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

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.

0 comments

1,459 additional answers

Anonymous

2016-08-23T02:27:36+00:00

I would give that a shot, but that is not a Surface Pro3, that's a 4 with a different back. This is the

Surface Pro 3 battery degradation vine and u can't open the Pro3 from the back...wish we could. thanks anyway-

m
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2016-08-23T11:47:13+00:00

Hey that Surface Pro 4 video does include removing the screen - it is just not shown in that particular clip. No other way to access the battery. Check ifixit for teardown.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments

Anonymous

Is there an ETA on the battery software fix at the moment? School has started and my battery cant even make it through a few notes, yesterday it died before class even began, this is after disabling all non-essential startup app, and all background processes, I've even uninstalled any non-vanilla software from the device making it basically a really expensive word processor, that turns to an even more expensive paper weight when not on a charger. My warranty ran out in April of this year and the battery degradation should not be even remotely this bad for such a new device...

Installed batteries

Information about each currently installed battery

NAME	X898289
MANUFACTURER	SIMPLO
SERIAL NUMBER	1167202820
CHEMISTRY	LION
DESIGN CAPACITY	42,157 mWh
FULL CHARGE CAPACITY	7,539 mWh
CYCLE COUNT	212

Battery capacity history

Charge capacity history of the system's batteries

2016-01-03 - 2016-01-11	40,174 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-01-11 - 2016-01-18	40,174 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-01-18 - 2016-01-25	40,463 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-01-25 - 2016-01-31	40,796 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-01-31 - 2016-02-02	40,568 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-02-02 - 2016-02-07	40,284 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-02-07 - 2016-02-14	40,375 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-02-14 - 2016-02-26	40,084 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-02-26 - 2016-02-29	40,090 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-02-29 - 2016-03-08	40,185 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-03-08 - 2016-03-14	40,726 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-03-14 - 2016-03-21	40,470 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-03-21 - 2016-03-27	40,174 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-03-27 - 2016-04-03	40,236 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-04-03 - 2016-04-10	40,860 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-04-10 - 2016-04-17	40,638 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-04-17 - 2016-04-24	40,453 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-04-24 - 2016-05-01	40,702 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-05-01 - 2016-05-11	42,583 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-05-11 - 2016-05-23	42,583 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-05-23 - 2016-05-29	37,975 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-05-29 - 2016-06-09	39,038 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-06-09 - 2016-06-12	35,477 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-06-12 - 2016-06-19	35,477 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-06-19 - 2016-06-26	29,298 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-06-26 - 2016-07-03	29,298 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-07-03 - 2016-07-10	29,298 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-07-10 - 2016-07-17	29,298 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-07-17 - 2016-07-24	29,298 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-07-24 - 2016-07-31	24,390 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-07-31 - 2016-08-07	15,510 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-08-07 - 2016-08-14	12,305 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-08-15	11,816 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-08-16	10,268 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-08-17	10,206 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-08-18	9,546 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-08-19	9,546 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-08-20	9,546 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-08-21	9,223 mWh	42,157 mWh

0 comments

Anonymous

2016-08-23T13:00:06+00:00
My frustration with Microsoft over this wasn't that there was an issue, it was that they weren't communicating to us effectively on the issue. Requiring us to pay $99 to talk to them was even more frustrating, and I eventually filed a report through my state's Consumer Protection Division. NC has a pretty strong one and they tend to go to bat pretty quickly.

I was contacted by Global Escalation services last week, who has been working on my case. I am not going to post the exact contents of the email as I am not sure how much he was supposed to tell me, but here are the things I learned.
1. This is a software issue (we have been told this)
2. The patch is in final QA, and is expected within one week
3. Because the issue has been positively identified as software, the new guidance is to NOT do out of warranty replacements anymore. This guidance has been passed down to the Microsoft Stores. (I assume the previous guidance as to allow out of warranty replacements for very frustrated customers... because this was what the escalation team thought they could do)
4. He freely admitted frustration with how Microsoft was handling this situation, and that effective communication would have likely gotten in front of this issue. He made it sound like they knew earlier, but couldn't publicly comment on the issue.
I have agreed to let my case pause for a week to give them time to get the firmware fix out and see if that resolves my issue.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments