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

2016-06-20T13:23:56+00:00

I agree that it may be a hardware issue. I was trying to look for firmware/OS updates that coincide with when the battery began to wear but wasn't able to come up with anything for sure. My capacity began dropping the week of 5/15. There was the SP3 firmware update in April so I doubt it is that; and there was a Windows 10 update (KB3156421) which I installed on 5/14. Though it seems like, of the people posting, the drop is happening at different times.

In any case, I am going to take my SP3 to the Microsoft Store in the next week or so and see what they can tell me. I'll update here.

FWIW I also have a SIMPLO battery.
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Anonymous

2016-06-20T14:51:23+00:00

Microsoft will be lucky if it is only a few of us - I bet it will turn out to be 10% of owners
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Anonymous

2016-06-20T19:41:16+00:00

I wonder if that owners are pleased with the actions of MS
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Anonymous

2016-06-20T21:08:06+00:00

I'm definitely not pleased with this (lack of) actions from Microsoft. I take a look at Reddit, and found several threads describing the same or similar issue as in this thread.

https://redd.it/4oueqy Interestingly, the same defect also happening with Pro 2. The post stated that the owner has owned the machine for over 2 years, and it started happening after March.

https://redd.it/4otmp1 The screenshot indicates that the battery start declining around May although the decline seems more steady. But that may be because the owner plug the machine in most of the time.

https://redd.it/4nhfgn Same with Surface Pro 3.

Other cases that might related, but without batteryreport.

https://redd.it/4opty9 Surface Book, might be related.

https://redd.it/4of0bs Might be related.

From the looks of it, the cycle count doesn't really mattered and the problem seems to start happening sometimes after March (e.g. my case). I think it may be because a battery defect in the lot that were produced around the end of 2014 that did not shown any defects after 14~15 months of usage, or the problem triggered by a firmware update.

Either way, I think there might be a lot more people who have this problem but haven't discovered it yet due to the battery not degraded enough to be noticeable. If they're unlucky (like us…), they will notice after the warranty expired.

I think if anyone here know anyone who use Surface Pro, it's better to ask them to run powercfg /batteryreport and see if it is affecting them or not. I wonder if there is a way to make Microsoft notice s?
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