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

2016-08-29T21:28:13+00:00

At last, although it appears even now Microsoft can't get customer service right; where is the post from Greg informing us officially that this is rolling out and is indeed the fix we've all been waiting for.

Anyway, after an hour of trying I finally got my SP3 to stay on long enough to check for updates and download and install the 29/8 firmware (I used the power supply not my dock to power the device). Here are my before and after capacities:

Before.........

![](http://fud.community.services.support.microsoft.com/Fud/FileDownloadHandler.ashx?fid=2f196589-01db-4f00-9a70-64ae1825f151)

After..........

![](http://fud.community.services.support.microsoft.com/Fud/FileDownloadHandler.ashx?fid=35465972-9e26-420b-ad2e-71673a61e848)

This isn't a 100% recovery to where I was before all this started but I am, with a huge relief, finally typing this on battery with 100% charge and 5 hours 28 minutes estimated time remaining (seems to be stuck on that so perhaps the full charge capacity will recover further after a few cycles.

While I'm certain they will not discuss this publicly I do hope that internally they take a long hard look at this because this should have been picked up by analysing returns, analysis telemetry and through this long running topic. Surface team you have a long way to go to regain my trust and at this time I do not expect to purchase another Surface device again in the near future.
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Anonymous

2016-08-29T21:35:09+00:00

Interesting... Stuck on the same value here... 144 before FW, 34200 after, and showing 35910 capacity, and after first reboot, just like you, 35910 max now on my setup with 499 cycles... SP3 i7 256Gb purchased in France, a liitle more than a year ago... This is probably how our battery should look like, I guess.
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Anonymous

2016-08-29T21:52:02+00:00

@DatabaseJase,

As a matter of interest, where are you getting this information from? Is this an app? Can you share the link where to get it from?

Thanks.
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Anonymous

2016-08-29T21:57:28+00:00

Exactly the same number for me, full charge capacity at 34,200 immediately after applying the update. up from 828 beforehand.

I'm glad (though not entirely convinced until I've given it some more testing) that MS have finally got around to fixing this, since I've been limited to working on a 5 year old netbook, for the last few weeks. It's a little worrying that a fix to a problem that made devices unusable was downloaded in about the time it took me to click the 'check for updates button' and yet took 3 months to release. But thank you microsoft for getting there in the end. I'm struggling to find anything more positive to say about the matter. Another day wasted migrating my work back to the surface.
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