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

2016-08-29T23:52:29+00:00

Matthew,

I have been through these links. The patch was installed today.

The trouble shooting has probably been done 15 times in past month.

Still no changes.
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Anonymous

2016-08-29T23:55:47+00:00

Hello everyone, now that the fix has been rolled out to near everyone, would it make sense to either start a new thread or refrain from posting on this one unless there are any new issues?

Like all of you, I am overjoyed that MS has fixed this but the posts are getting repetitive. I don't want to unfollow this thread in case there is any important information posted.

Best,

Anjan
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Anonymous

2016-08-30T00:23:42+00:00

Martech,

Have you tried deleting the battery drivers as some here have said this fixed their charge status. please keep us posted.

Mathew
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Anonymous

2016-08-30T00:26:48+00:00

I applied the update and the charge capacity on the battery report went to 34,200 and the charging progress claimed it would take 5 hours to charge. This was exciting because anything more than 2 minutes to charge, is progress.

However, 2 minutes later and my battery is at 100%. Now it either charged quickly, or my battery is hosed and the report is just a bogus number, Microsoft has defaulted the minimum to, so it no longer shows 144mWh.

Either way, I'm about to remove the mains power to see if it just shuts off, at which point, the update would not have fixed my surface.

Results to come ...

Well, it's still working and the battery states I have 7 hours left.

After 5 minutes use, 6 hrs 48 left, but strangely, still at 100%.

5 minutes more and it's now 5 hours, 42 minutes left at 100%

A few minutes later, 4 hours, 10 minutes at 100%

A few minutes later, 5 hours, 58 minutes at 100%. (I closed IE with the battery report.)

A few minutes later, 6 hours, 21 minutes at 100%. (still not plugged in and nothing open except Chrome with this page.)

All I'm doing is sitting here, typing this and waiting a few minutes to check the battery indicator, which changes dramatically after only a few minutes.

This means I've probably got around 35 minutes on batteries, before it shuts off. Maybe successive charges will extend the duration?

I can only conclude that my battery has been fully charged all this time, but reported as 144 mWh by the buggy firmware that results in the device shutting down.

Despite the inordinate amount of time to fix and the prolonged loss of use it caused, thank you for fixing the bug, Microsoft and restoring my device to a usable state.

I suspect there will be a more stable fix coming in the future where 7 hours remaining will actually mean around 7 hours.
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