Microsoft's newest firmware update is aimed at eradicating Surface Pro 3 battery issues

Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 has been plagued with battery issues for the past year with devices from two battery suppliers  – Simpl0 and LGC falling prey once after another. Microsoft is putting a stop to this with an update released to Surface Pro 3 owners this week. With the Surface Pro 3 System Firmware update – 11/07/2016 (07th of November), Microsoft confirms that this addresses the issue for the LGC devices which began reporting this fault in September.

Surface Pro Embedded Controller Firmware v38.11.50.0 corrects an error that may occur on a limited number of Surface Pro 3 devices where the full charge capacity of the battery is misreported to the operating system and device firmware. This update corrects the firmware component that functions as a “fuel gauge” so that the battery capacity is accurately reported.

According to Microsoft, the battery issue with the Surface pro 3s wasn’t due to the hardware, but due to the firmware. Rather than report the accurate battery life, the Surface would misreport the battery capacity to the system, preventing it from fully charging and therefore leading to perceived short battery life. Microsoft likens this to a faulty fuel gauge, whereby the fuel gauge shows it is full when it is in fact half full or less than that. The new update released this week fixes that logic issue, though it won’t be immediate. Over a series of charge and discharge sequences, the Surface should eventually return back to normal.

The update should be available now, and can be downloaded via the going to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update > Check for updates.

Have you received the software updates? Let us know in the comments below.