Surface Pro 3 Battery Capacity – The Connected Home

Did the SP3 Simplo battery fix negatively impact LGC?

Posted September 12, 2016 barbPosted in Surface

If you have a Surface Pro 3, you probably received a firmware update on or around 8/292016. This firmware update is a fix for Simplo batteries only. Most people have reported their SP3’s with Simplo batteries now show reasonable capacity (but there are customers reporting bricks).

A trend is appearing in the Microsoft Community Forums (Answers) that suggests that something in the firmware to fix Simplo has had a bad impact on Surface Pro 3’s equipped with LGC batteries. This thread has some folks posting about this http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/surfpro3-surfhardware/surface-pro-3-with-lgc-lgc-battery-degradation/13d03fbe-1edd-489f-bd0a-2c07ff615128?msgId=25830051-4e6d-4a5d-b194-2e78168e6534 (and there are a couple of others).

If you have a Surface Pro 3, you should open an administrative cmd prompt and type

powercfg /battery report

Save the file and if it looks like the samples below, post in the above thread. As you can see, these folks are stuck on a fixed, less than 100% capacity. This condition was not present prior to the 8/29 firmware update. You can also let me know on Twitter, @barbbowman if you are impacted.

Surface Pro 3 Batterygate Continues

Posted August 6, 2016August 6, 2016 barbPosted in Microsoft, Surface

While Microsoft’s response to the SIMPLO issue has been restricted to “working on a possible software fix”, customers are starting to report that even when plugged in, their SP3 tablets shut down. In essence, they can’t use their Surface Pro 3’s at all. This seems to happen when the amount of usable battery fully charged falls below a certain point, and as the days continue without a fix, more and more customers will have unusable devices. I don’t see that they will be able to keep their devices running long enough to even apply a software fix, should one actually become available. These customers are trapped. Microsoft won’t swap them out, and some are paying the usurious $450 out of warranty exchange fee. Note that Microsoft committed to a $200 battery replacement program on a Reddit AMA https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/26m9cu/we_are_panos_panay_and_the_surface_team_at/chsei5u but has refused to honor this or even comment on it. (And as an aside, Apple charges $129 to replace an out of warranty battery.)

200

Microsoft told customers in the same Reddit AMA https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/26m9cu/we_are_panos_panay_and_the_surface_team_at/chse7pn that “the battery can get charged daily (5 days a week) for over 4.5 years and still maintain 80% capacity”. Again, customers are responding in the thread that they can’t even use their devices while connected or docked.

usage

I checked my sent email and note that as a Community Forum Moderator that I brought it to the attention of Microsoft on March 3, 2016. And a couple of times thereafter. I saw the trending that early.

And as of Saturday, March 6, afflicted Microsoft customers have not had a single update on the situation since the initial “we think we can fix in software and are working on a fix”.

Surface Pro 3 SIMPLO Battery Issue?

Posted July 16, 2016 barbPosted in Surface

As a Community Moderator on the Microsoft Surface Forums, it’s pretty easy for me to pick up trending hot issues (unlike the paid Forum staff who do not triage or correlate). I regularly forward these on to a contact inside Microsoft. At the end of June, I saw an increasing number of reports about a sudden and dramatic decrease in Surface Pro 3 battery capacity. I’ve been forwarding these along every since, asking that Microsoft at minimum state that “we are investigating reports”, but no official MS rep has even posted that they are reading and investigating.

Sadly, once out of warranty, it costs $99 to even contact official support. And the scripted answer is “we will replace your device with a refurb for $450” (etc.). Many folks have gone this route.

I’ve been scraping the forum and doing my own analysis. The folks who know how to run a battery report (admin cmd prompt, then powercfg /batteryreport) have been posting screen shots or cut and paste text outputs. Based on the sampling, I see only SIMPLO batteries and no LGC batteries. This is disturbing.

I’ve been begging MS to respond to afflicted users. The silence is deafening.

Below is a sampling of what I am scraping from the Forum. If you have a Surface Pro3 and are seeing diminished capacity, PLEASE post in http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/surfpro3-surfhardware/surface-pro-3-battery-degradation/783f6a00-19ba-4dcf-a828-0ad87751e15a. Please include a screenshot/capture of the capacity history and the manufacturer of the battery.

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