Microsoft admits Surface Pro 3 battery flaw, says firmware update isn't to blame

Surface Pro 3

Remember the latest Surface Pro 3 battery problem? Not the earlier long-standing issue which affected Simplo batteries, but a fresh bugbear that has hit LGC batteries and causes the hybrid to fail to charge? Well, Microsoft has officially acknowledged this second flaw.

We reported on this earlier in the week, with users on the Answers.com forum being frustrated at the lack of response from Microsoft, but now a company representative as posted on that thread.

The rep stated that: "We are aware of a battery issue that is affecting a limited number of Surface Pro 3 users. We can confirm that the issue affecting these customers was not caused by the software updates issued on August 29. Our team is actively looking in to the issue to determine the cause and identify a fix. We will post an update as soon as we have more information to share."

Note Microsoft's clarification that this wasn't caused by the firmware update which was pushed out to solve the previous Simplo battery issue on August 29.

'Extraordinary coincidences'

Many of the SP3 owners in the thread observed that the problem seemed to start after said firmware update, which is why Microsoft is addressing that point. However, some users are still steadfast in their assertion that their Surface Pro was working fine until immediately after this update was applied.

As one commenter put it: "I do appreciate that someone from Microsoft has acknowledged the problem exists and some work is being done on it, but I am concerned about the disparity between the reports here and the assertion that the problem is unrelated to any software update. Some extraordinary coincidences here if that's the case!"

That said, some forum posters have also claimed that this issue has been around since early this year.

At any rate, at least Microsoft is now investigating the problem, and hopefully a fix can be cooked up before long. Although given the time it took to solve the previous bout of battery blues, affected users could be in for something of a wait.

Via: Neowin

  • Hopefully future hybrids like the Surface Pro 5 won't get the battery blues

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).