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Fully Charged Power Cover's Battery Discharges Down to 40% Overnight, Huh?

Sir Face

New Member
I am noticing a very aggravating issue. After a full charge (100% on both SP@ and Power Cover), if left off overnight, the Power Cover's battery is only showing a 40% charge...WTF? This renders the Power Cover's usefulness almost zero for my applications. Is this the way it's supposed to work?
 
I am noticing a very aggravating issue. After a full charge (100% on both SP@ and Power Cover), if left off overnight, the Power Cover's battery is only showing a 40% charge...WTF? This renders the Power Cover's usefulness almost zero for my applications. Is this the way it's supposed to work?

I don't have a power cover but I wonder if the keyboard is always "on" or is there a on/off switch? maybe that's draining it?
 

daniielrp

Active Member
Good observation, but I'm afraid there's no such switching function as far as I know.

Is the PC Shutdown overnight? I used to put mine in sleep mode and Windows updates would wake it and sometimes get stuck and keep it on all night using battery.
 

jnjroach

Administrator
Staff member
If the Surface is in Sleep, the Power Cover will continue to give it power until the cover is completely drained. The Power Cover acts as "mains" keeping the Surface Battery at 100% not as a secondary battery....
 

be77solo

Active Member
Power Cover is a buggy mess, I totally regret buying mine after trying to use it for a couple months and no longer use it. You can only charge the blasted thing with the Surface turned on, it will randomly drain overnight as original poster has said, even with the Surface turned off, and if you use it while sitting on anything but a solid table and move a bit, it will shutdown or reboot the Surface randomly due to poor contacts on the spine.

Stay FAR away from the power cover. By comparison, my 6 month old type cover 2 is still rock solid.
 

GoodBytes

Well-Known Member
Power Cover is a buggy mess, I totally regret buying mine after trying to use it for a couple months and no longer use it. You can only charge the blasted thing with the Surface turned on, it will randomly drain overnight as original poster has said, even with the Surface turned off, and if you use it while sitting on anything but a solid table and move a bit, it will shutdown or reboot the Surface randomly due to poor contacts on the spine.

Stay FAR away from the power cover. By comparison, my 6 month old type cover 2 is still rock solid.

"Buggy" means that it was not bad design. Everything you said is by designed and documented by Microsoft. So, it is not buggy.
Now, you can say that you don't agree with the implementation of the second battery, that is fine. But buggy, no. Sorry.

What you are describing sounds like a manufacture error, I would return it, and order a new one or go through warranty.
 

be77solo

Active Member
"Buggy" means that it was not bad design. Everything you said is by designed and documented by Microsoft. So, it is not buggy.
Now, you can say that you don't agree with the implementation of the second battery, that is fine. But buggy, no. Sorry.

What you are describing sounds like a manufacture error, I would return it, and order a new one or go through warranty.

Negative GoodBytes, call it what you want, but the Power Cover has issues, be it bugs OR design flaws... When it first came out, we were told it would charge whether Surface was on or off with the included instructions AND by Microsoft's own support page until we raised such a fuss over on the answers.microsoft forum they finally just changed the instructions. Error #1 Microsoft that affects all covers.

Also, per your response, it is by design that the cover will randomly drain, even with the Surface turned off, if it is still attached? Negative sir, error #2. Its not just mine with this problem, well reported over on answers.microsoft.com. On this same token, they still can't even make the Surfaces reliably sleep/hibernate/stay asleep/wake up etc.... I've discovered through regular usage the Power Cover doesn't handle these situations well and end result is a depleted power cover unexpectedly at the absolute worst time.

As for my third problem, the Power Cover is too heavy/stiff to stay well attached to the spine of the Surface without rocking around... there is some very obvious rolling around if you wiggle things at all. The downside to this is the two power plugs will occasionally lose connection and create all sorts of havoc on the system. On a solid desk in laptop mode, it will work fine, but once you start trying to use it on the go on a lap or with the power cover folded back, problems eventually arise.

It's unfortunate, and I can only assume Power Cover 2 will be better, but no matter how ya slice the bread currently, it's still stale.
 

macmee

Active Member
Negative GoodBytes, call it what you want, but the Power Cover has issues, be it bugs OR design flaws... When it first came out, we were told it would charge whether Surface was on or off with the included instructions AND by Microsoft's own support page until we raised such a fuss over on the answers.microsoft forum they finally just changed the instructions. Error #1 Microsoft that affects all covers.

Also, per your response, it is by design that the cover will randomly drain, even with the Surface turned off, if it is still attached? Negative sir, error #2. Its not just mine with this problem, well reported over on answers.microsoft.com. On this same token, they still can't even make the Surfaces reliably sleep/hibernate/stay asleep/wake up etc.... I've discovered through regular usage the Power Cover doesn't handle these situations well and end result is a depleted power cover unexpectedly at the absolute worst time.

As for my third problem, the Power Cover is too heavy/stiff to stay well attached to the spine of the Surface without rocking around... there is some very obvious rolling around if you wiggle things at all. The downside to this is the two power plugs will occasionally lose connection and create all sorts of havoc on the system. On a solid desk in laptop mode, it will work fine, but once you start trying to use it on the go on a lap or with the power cover folded back, problems eventually arise.

It's unfortunate, and I can only assume Power Cover 2 will be better, but no matter how ya slice the bread currently, it's still stale.

Exchange your power cover with Microsoft. Mine hasn't been having any of those issues.
 

toaf

Member
ya ive been at work 8.5 hours and mine is down to 46% left(powercover only). if something isnt on using it it must be a bad keyboard. mines been on (standby) most of the time, but ive had corel and 3dmax up. so im sure that takes some juice
 
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