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

2016-08-31T00:48:18+00:00

Well Greg and Matthew!

What is the plan for the LGC Surface Pro 3’s?

I have done everything that has been mentioned including the patch yesterday!

Yes, I have removed the battery driver. I then ran Windows Update, no new driver was installed. When I scanned for hardware changes, it reinstalled the device driver.

I let it sit and charge on power adapter for 24 hours. Turned it on, and it booted to the bios screen. I saved changes and restarted a couple of times, and it booted on the power adapter.

It is a brick now and will not even boot now unless the power adapter is plugged in.

My battery still says 61% plugged in and not charging. I mentioned this several times yesterday and received no solutions. Several other uses have mentioned the same issue in this forum.

Is Microsoft going to take ownership of this problem and fix it like the Simplo’s? Or is Microsoft going to screw us?
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2016-08-31T00:49:03+00:00

I find it very odd that many people reported a bottom of 144 mWh before the firmware update and 35,910 mWh after the firmware update. Since these are the numbers I show it has stood out that so many others have the same. Why would this be?

As I stated earlier, the 144 mWh would be the minimum calculated charge level by the buggy charge calculation algorithm that would have been replaced by a hard coded minimum in the fix, to get the batteries to charge and show a capacity, way above 144 mWh.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2016-08-31T00:59:15+00:00

I just had a look at this page and there's nothing to say how long it will take, an idea of how long would be great. I know it says a few minutes but mine is coming close to an hour now and its still sitting on the "Please wait... " screen. There is a white ba all the way under the word 'Surface' that has been there for a long, long time. The fan is going nuts blowing cold air and I dont know what I should do.

Mine took minutes, but the first step is downloading the binaries and this may take some time, depending on your connection speed. A reboot then occurs, with little warning. Scarily, during the restart, the firmware gets upgraded and you see a black screen with a progress bar, but with mine, the fan kicked in before the bar was full. This normally eats what little charge remains in the battery and the device shuts down. Right at around 100%, the device switched off and it was so quick I couldn't determine if it actually reached 100% and whether this was a scheduled reboot, or if it died before reaching 100%. Anyway, it came back up, the startup spinner displayed, then Windows was upgrading. At 100% I got the login prompt and was done. I logged in and the battery was charging, but only took 2 minutes to reach 100%. This meant my battery was charged all along and my device was shutting down because the battery driver thought it was empty, when it wasn't. That's annoying in itself; knowing my battery was actually charged the whole time, but the tablet wouldn't use it because of a software/firmware bug.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2016-08-31T02:05:03+00:00

I find it very odd that many people reported a bottom of 144 mWh before the firmware update and 35,910 mWh after the firmware update. Since these are the numbers I show it has stood out that so many others have the same. Why would this be?

As I stated earlier, the 144 mWh would be the minimum calculated charge level by the buggy charge calculation algorithm that would have been replaced by a hard coded minimum in the fix, to get the batteries to charge and show a capacity, way above 144 mWh.

Mine went down to 143 and bounced back up. Why would so many people go to exactly 35,910 with the firmware update?
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments