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Surface 3 (Atom) not charging only when asleep (Weird)

Egyptian19

New Member
Hi, So I just got my surface 3 (Atom) a few days ago, and it has done this about three times now now. I can reproduce the issue easily.

At night at the end of the day, my surface is almost dead, so I close the cover, plug it in, and leave it over night, but when I wake up in the morning, I find that my surface has only slightly charged or not charged at all.

The only way I've found to fix this is to plug the surface in while it's still awake and the screen is on, and verify it is charging before closing the cover. It charges fine this way.

Anyone know why? Did I just get a another defective surface?

On a side note: This is my second surface 3, my first one had the same issue, but also had problems with rapid phantom screen tapping at the bottom left corner, so I had to return it because I couldn't get anything done. (The issue persisted through clean installations.)

I am running windows 10 Home if that matters.

Anyone else have this problem?
 

Turbo4AWD

Active Member
Got a firmware update labeled 07/22/15 and now my Surface 3 charges while in use and displays the "x hours and x minutes until completely charged". Hope it lasts. I'll update in a few days.
 

HeavyHanded

New Member
I've had this same problem on my Surface 3 since I got it. And when it happens is in the exact same scenario you described. Now I'm paranoid. I always check to make sure the Windows lock screen shows charging. I never charges it without checking to be sure that Windows shows 'plugged in, charging'. Kind of sad, since the engineers went to all the trouble to put light on the micro-USB connector.
 

GreyFox7

Super Moderator
Staff member
I've had this same problem on my Surface 3 since I got it. And when it happens is in the exact same scenario you described. Now I'm paranoid. I always check to make sure the Windows lock screen shows charging. I never charges it without checking to be sure that Windows shows 'plugged in, charging'. Kind of sad, since the engineers went to all the trouble to put light on the micro-USB connector.
Sadly that light is an *idiot* light... as it's always on when connected regardless of what it's doing.
Raspberries to the *idiot* that implemented that. :)

A light that changes color depending on state would have been nice.
 

Jasmine

Member
I'm having a similar issue. Mine is charging very slowly both when the device is on and when it's off (and on top of that, I have terrible battery life). It's been charging for two hours. I took it off thinking I'd have a bit of battery life to use on the go and it only has 13%, even though I plugged it in at 6%.

Yesterday, I ran down the battery and it took nearly 40 minutes before my Surface would come back on. Like you, this isn't my first Surface 3 either. It's my third (though sixth in general that has had issues) and I'm really tired of getting devices that never seem to work properly.

In my case, I did notice that the usb-mini port seems loose. If I jiggle it at all, the charger light goes off. I'm not sure if that'll help you, but you may want to look into it.
 
I've never had a problem with charging. In fact, the only time the charger is NOT plugged in is when I have it set up in my vehicle. When I use it at home, it is plugged in 100% of the time, when in use and when shutdown.
 
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