Microsoft has confirmed the battery drain issues that has been dogging some Surface Pro 3 owners is a software glitch and that it can be fixed with a suitable patch.
The Redmond-based company, however, stopped short of committing to a specific launch window for the said software fix. Experts though believe it could be part of the update rolled out during a Patch Tuesday, the next of which falls on August 9.
That said, an earlier rollout of the update can’t be ruled out either considering the severity of the issue. Microsoft also has the Windows 10 Anniversary update due on August 2 though that is unlikely to solve the battery drain issue that a section of Pro 3 owners have been experiencing off late.
“Based on our investigations we can confirm that it is not an issue with the battery cells. We believe this is something that can be addressed via software,” the company revealed in response to anxious Pro 3 owner’s queries in the support forum.
Several Surface Pro 3 owners have been complaining about their device loosing charge in just a few of hours since May. For some, the drain seems to have been particularly severe with their batteries lasting just about an hour or two even after a full recharge.
The Surface Book and the Surface Pro 4 too had issues with the battery initially when it got drained faster than anticipated. However, the issue then was isolated to the inability of the device to shift to an ultra-low power consuming mode even though the user might have invoked the sleep state. Eventually, this made the device consume battery at peak rate while it also led to the device getting overheated as well.
Fortunately, it’s none of that happening with the present crop of Pro 3 owners with the present battery drain issue seemingly much less severe in comparison as well. That said, let’s hope it doesn’t eventually take the few months that Microsoft took to launch a fix to the Pro 4 and SB battery issue.
Microsoft meanwhile seems to have pushed back the launch of the Surface Pro 5 to 2017. The same also applies to the Surface Book 2 as well. While no specific reasons for the delay have been put forth so far, rumors mill have been churning out stores claiming Microsoft is waiting for Windows 10 to mature beyond the Redmond 2 update due around spring 2017 before committing new high-end devices to it.
That is not all as there are also reports of the Redmond company awaiting Intel’s newest Kaby Lake chips to evolve fully before building a new hardware around it. Meanwhile, there also are rumors of more devices in the Surface range that would be launched next year.
If all of what is being said is indeed true then waiting for new Surface hardware might be worth it for sure.
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