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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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.

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1,459 additional answers

Anonymous

2016-08-25T01:55:46+00:00

6 months out of warranty on my surface pro 3 (i had to go through 2 surfaces due to touch issues).

My battery life is now down to about an hour. Originally I would get 6 - 7 hours of usage.

This is ridiculous. I'm not going to pay $400+ to fix this when it's a manufacture defect.
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Anonymous

2016-08-25T02:52:35+00:00

I find that using the method to disable hibernation and not shutting down the sp3, works for me. it doesn't bring up the capacity back to the original capacity, but at least the "full charged capacity" doesn't go down and maintain at one point.

when i fully charged, the full charged percentage ranges around 99 percent. if i use the sp3 down to 30%, then i charge again to full, i only get at about 98%, but if i discharge to 80% then start charging again to full, i get about 99%. the "full charged capacity" still maintains as I didn't hibernate or shutdown the sp3.
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Anonymous

2016-08-25T05:06:17+00:00

I have a 1.2Ghz dual core Dell D430 where I installed an SSD, it is 9 years old (!!!) and the battery life is over 2 1/2 hours! Still works smoothly for Office, Internet and VB programming!

My SP3, 18 months old, works much more smoothly of course, but only works for 1 1/2 hours now where over 9 was promised! I am very worried....
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Anonymous

2016-08-25T16:15:03+00:00

This happens to mine, too. Under heavy load, with a terminal battery, the SP3 will randomly shut down. Had not considered that this was because the power supply was over loaded without the battery there to augment. How. Bloody. Lame. MSFT!!!
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