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Post Your SP3 Power/Battery/Charging Issues Here

dman27

Active Member
Jeff, 60% is for better than the 35% that most are Using as a tweak just to get anywhere near those numbers.
 

dstrauss

Active Member
...My gripe (particularly at another forum I frequent) is with WiFi connectivity and battery drain during sleep, hopefully issue that will be corrected with the next firmware update (although I really have my doubts about the Marvell network card)....I just want the SPro 3 to deliver that 6 hours without running it down when it is supposed to be sleeping (and wake up and reconnect to the WiFi connections)

Just wanted to update everyone. Last Tuesday's (7/8/2014) did fix the WiFi, at least mostly (still disconnects on occasions, say 1 out of 5 sleep restarts), but battery continued to drain nearly 30% in 8 hours of sleep mode.

BUT

Some good folks elsewhere recommended a full reset and re-install all drivers and software - YUCK - but it worked. Last night a good example - 9 hours sleep and dropped 6% of battery - I can live with that, and mostly staying connected to WiFi. Looking forward to July 16 WiFi specific patch.
 

codo

New Member
I didn't know about the battery report, I just ran it and it says 3:21 estimated time so far. That's after a month-5 weeks ish ownership and doing basically nothing but social media. I hadn't really realized because it just sits on my night stand really as I use my desktop while at home mainly. Haven't altered any settings from factory aside from lowering brightness, on battery its just a couple clicks above minimum. Thinking I might try a reset, but I'm starting to think I might just have a lemon on my hands
 

mcorder76

New Member
Surface pro 3 will not detect battery. Has anyone had this issue? It seemed to work fine while plugged in then unplugged, but then after removing charger and attempting cold boot, nothing. Last Wednesday's update was applied, and all seemed fine. Until now. After further diagnosis, found that the minute the charger is removed, the unit shuts down completely.
 

codo

New Member
Did the reset and after 3 days or something I'm still in the 70% range, did the trick apparently.
 

ZorMi

Member
I have an issue with my surface pro 3 dying like 30 seconds after it hits 10%. Does anyone else have this issue? It discharges just fine and I'm getting about 5-6 hours on it with screen at 65% brightness but as soon as it hits 10% I get the warning, then 10 secs later I get 7% warning then 5 secs later it shuts down completely or "hibernates". I don't know if this is normal or if I should go exchange it. Please help!
Any news with this? It just happened to me... suddenly discharging in several seconds and hibernates.
 

GreyFox7

Super Moderator
Staff member
Does anyone get plugged in but not charging at 90%? I left it plugged in overnight and get this.

Not sure about the SP3 but my Lenovo laptops do that as part of its battery management process... continually running with it plugged in and charging at 99/100% will shorten your battery life over time.
 

bearly

New Member
Hi all, I've looked through the forums and can't find a solution to my problem. I need to calibrate whatever reports the remaining battery percentage. Basically my reported battery life drops really really slowly down to about 82% (after several hours use) and then drops like a stone with the machine switching off with no warning. I've run the battery report utility:
powercfg /batteryreport /output %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\battery_report.html

and attached a screenshot of the report - you can see the numbers are completely off the wall!

Thanks for any suggestions!
 

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GreyFox7

Super Moderator
Staff member
There's a FREE benchmark test app in the store that has a battery test option. The app is called TabletMark v2. I just downloaded it >900mb and ran it for 2 iterations which takes approximately 40 min per iteration. If you select the Battery Test option the iteration count is disabled which I assume means its going to run until the battery dies.

In order for any comparisons to be valid everyone would need to run with the same configuration. i.e. auto brightness disabled, airplane mode, Bluetooth off, brightness at 50%, Sound at 50%, no USB connections, keyboard disconnected. Need to ensure same set of startup apps and nothing running in the background (details TBD). I'd say as prep run the device down to 20% battery then charge it to 100% then shutdown for 10 min, startup, launch the test app and set a configuration. Them disconnect the power and start the test.

Here's where it gets trickier... especially since I haven't done this yet... it appears the test will record a battery score automatically [I hope :)] this could take hours and hours which many just don't have.
Alternatively if say you just ran 6 iterations which should take around 4 hours then recorded the % battery life there's a risk of error but might be a shorter option. in addition if you miss the end then your manually collected results would be off by some amount.

Both options would allow people doing the same test scenarios to compare their results. I figure results within perhaps 10% are normal and if your results deviate by more then it bears further investigation.

Clearly other things they may be installed could have adverse impacts. Such a the DisplayLink driver I have installed I have noticed uses a lot of resources and the USB dock does some weird stuff waking up whatever is attached periodically. not sure if those drivers go completely silent if its disconnected.

I'll experiment a bit more with this and let ya know how it goes.
 

GreyFox7

Super Moderator
Staff member
Follow up to last post ... I ran the TabletMark v2 battery test and it ended after 4 iterations in 3 hours with 75% battery remaining. looks like I need to run the conditioning option first or read the instructions:) anyway I checked it hourly and after 1 hour it was at 92%, 2 hours at 84% and 75% after three hours. a fairly consistent usage and at that rate it would have 25% left after 9 hours. this test is not super hard more like a typical user.

In Addition today I ran 9 hours on battery during almost constant usage. The battery declined fairly consistently at about 10% per hour with 8% left after 9 hours. I had to go out so I plugged it in and an hour later it was charged to 54% when I started using it again while charging and after 1.5 hours total charge time its up to 75%.

I have to go out again so it'll be full charged when I get back and ill see what else I can do with TabletMark.
 
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