Microsoft has released various updates for older Surface devices to fix connection problems. Another update shall improve battery life. And owners of a Surface Pro 7 complain about poor battery life.
Update for older Surfaces
Through this neowin.net article I became aware that Microsoft has released a firmware update for older Surface models with drivers. The Surface Pro 4, Surface Pro (2017), Surface Pro 6, Surface Laptop 1 and 2 as well as the Surface Book will receive the following updates:
- Marvell Semiconductor, Inc. – Bluetooth – 15.68.17015.112 to improve Bluetooth connectivity
- Marvell Semiconductor, Inc. – Net – 15.68.17015.112, Marvell AVASTAR Wireless-AC Network Controller – Network Adapter Driver, is designed to address Wi-Fi connectivity issues.
In addition, Surface Pro 2017 and Surface Pro 6 will receive another update:
Surface – HIDClass – 1.1.136.0, Surface Tcon Device – Human Interface Devices, improves system bugcheck performance.
Finally, Surface Pro 6 receives an additional firmware update:
Surface – Firmware – 241.6.139.0, Surface System Aggregator, fixes a problem where the CPU is throttled down to 400 MHz and improves battery stability.
These updates ship via Windows Update on machines running Windows 10 version 1903 or later.
Issues with battery life on Surface Pro 7
Owners of a Surface Pro 7 now realize that the battery life of this model seem to be poor. MS Power User has taken up the complaints of dissatisfied users. On reddit.com a user asks why the battery life of the Surface Pro 7 is worse than that of the Surface Pro 6.
Do we know WHY Surface Pro 7 battery life is worse than 6?
The CPU and RAM are more power efficient, and the rest has not changed much. It seems that battery life should at least be the same as the 5/6 but has gone down. Do we have any insight as to why? I would understand some if it was worse due to GPU tasks, with the IRIS GPU, but even just normal usage it seems people are saying they are getting noticeably less life.
Also this reddit.com user is surprised that the Surface Pro 7 only lasts 5 hours with one battery charge.
Surface Pro 7 Battery Life
So I got my Surface Pro 7 today and I used it to set everything up and just browse the internet for a while and watch a few videos on Youtube. To my surprise, the battery only lasted for about 5 hours… Which is a huge let down because one of the major reasons I got it was for the portability factor and the battery life. I have the Pro 7 i5 256 GB 8 GB model.
Should I wait for a while and a couple more charges (On my second charge right now) or should I consider returning it?
Edit: I am at 50% brightness and barely running any background apps other than what windows might be running by default.
There was a firmware update from Microsoft (see) to solve the problem. But at Microsoft Answers there is this discussion, where users still complains about the poor battery life time.
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