Microsoft's new Surface Book and Pro 4 updates boost battery life

Surface Book and Surface Pro 4

Microsoft has unleashed another round of updates for its Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 hybrids, with some very useful tweaks being made including a boost to battery life.

If you own a Surface Book, the June updates optimize battery usage when the device is in connected standby mode.

Redmond also notes that it has improved stability levels when the 2-in-1 resumes from sleep or hibernation, and the chance of an unexpected shutdown happening while your Surface Book is sleeping has been "reduced" (if not eliminated).

Finally, an issue where the touchscreen stayed active when the display was closed against the keyboard has been fixed (which again won't hurt on the battery front).

Exactly the same updates have been applied to the Surface Pro 4, save for the unexpected shutdown when sleeping issue.

Sleeping beauty

The improvements concerning fixing sleep mode wobbles will certainly be welcome, as this is an issue which has long troubled some Surface users. And obviously any improvement in terms of battery longevity is very good to see, too.

You'll find these updates simply by checking for them under Windows (to manually check, go to Settings – in the Start menu – then click Update & Security, Windows Update, and then select Check for Updates).

Note that a small fix has also been provided for the Surface 3 (4G LTE models) in Europe, which is aimed at improving mobile broadband connectivity, and making your 4G connection more stable and reliable in general.

Another point worth noting for those in the UK – the Surface Book 1TB has very recently been made available on Microsoft's online store, and can be pre-ordered now, with the device set to ship in just over a week (June 30). This model with copious storage has been available over in the US since the beginning of the year.

Via: MS Power User

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).

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