Microsoft has finally buried the Surface Pro 3's battery problem

Surface Pro 3

We've been hearing so much about issues with Microsoft's newest Surface devices, that it's easy to forget previous generations of the hardware still have problems – and indeed Surface Pro 3 owners who've had battery difficulties will be pleased to hear that Redmond is coming up with some answers on this long-standing bugbear.

Some Surface Pro 3s have been reporting a much lower battery capacity than expected, and obviously battery longevity is a killer issue when it comes to being out and about with your hybrid.

However, the good news is that a Microsoft forum moderator has posted (as spotted by The Digital Lifestyle) to say that the company's investigations have led it to believe that this is not a hardware issue, but a software one.

In other words, it isn't dodgy batteries which have affected some customers (a "limited number" of users according to Microsoft), but rather it's something that can be patched up by a simple software update.

Devil in the details

The Microsoft rep in question said that the company was currently "working through the details" on how this fix could be delivered. We'll keep you up-to-date as we hear more on when this patch will be implemented, but given that Microsoft is openly talking about delivering it, we'd assume those affected won't have long to wait.

Meanwhile, both the current-gen Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 have received several rounds of updates recently, including improvements to the Surface Pen and the responsiveness of the touchscreen.

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).