Updated Firmware and Drivers - August 30, 2016

[DanielS78]

Screen at brightness under 15% is still flickering. Do you have this problem? Or is a hardware problem? Should i go angain back to the warranty?

Hi, having the same issue on a recently bought i5 4gb .

After research the explanation it has to do with the intel graphics driver lowering screen frequency below certain brightness level seems the most plausible.

I dont believe this is a hardware issue.

 

[starstreak]

Well after the last set of updates, at least my SP4 does cpu throttle all they way down to .98Mhz. But hardly at that level, even with 1-3%CPU usage it tends to be above 1.5Ghz.
I have noticed that battery life is more true to itself. Now instead of seeing it say 5+hrs from 100% and just idling for a few mins, it says 3hrs. And if I use the Surface for about 15mins of web surfing (I'm using IE, not Edge) Battery is down to about 85%. and about 2hr or so for rundown.
Stuff that still bugs me:
1) How hot it'll get just doing things like web surfing, Outlook, watching a video. I could've sworn, one of the pluses they mentioned when showing off the SP4 was how it doesn't get hot.
2) Battery life. If they said 3hrs, I would've been fine. Nowhere near 8+hours.
3) Now...They said it wasn't really meant to play games. But sheesh, I wish it was more compatible where I could at least launch the games and play it at crappy frame rates. This is one time that Surface Book might have been a better choice.

Besides those things, at least at the moment, it doesn't crash or anything.

 

[wynand32]

At this point, I'm fairly happy with my SP4 except:

1. I don't trust it enough to put it to sleep and stick it in a bag. I shut it down instead (and it starts up fast enough that it really doesn't bother me). In all fairness, though, I don't really trust _any_ machine in this regard. My 2012 MacBook Air also had a terrible habit of hot-bagging--one time I opened it up while it was in a case and supposed to be sleeping and it was literally too hot to touch. I think Intel processors, in general, can't be trusted--ARM definitely has this mastered. Otherwise, my SP4 seems to sleep when it should and wakes without any problem, which is a major improvement over some previous firmware/OS versions.

2. I'm getting between 4.5 and 5 hours of battery life, with the screen at no more than 25% brightness and doing nothing more than simple browsing. I would have hoped for something closer to 7 hours or so. I'm not sure why it's doing so poorly--the CPU seems to be throttling as it should and as I said screen brightness isn't excessive. And I'm fairly convinced this isn't going to improve, at least not with my machine.

Generally, I do consider it an excellent machine and I can honestly say it's my favorite PC out of many that I've owned over the years. I think I'll opt for the next generation of Surface Book as my next PC, but only because I do miss the "lapability" of a standard clamshell at times.

 

[kristalsoldier]

Talking about firmware and updates. Today, VLC for Windows crashed for some reason and it froze up the device (SP4 - i5/8GB/256GB; W10). The device is all up-to-date including the firmware and updates as listed by Jeff on the first page.

I had to keep the Power button pressed for the device to start up, which it did. As the Surface lettering appeared, a line also appeared saying a system update is being installed, please wait. That took about a minute not more and then everything proceeded as normal.

I looked at the Update section in the Settings App - I can't see any firmware or system update more recent than the one that has been listed at the head of this thread. In fact, there is no trace that any system update was applied today.

Any ideas what is going on?

 

[kristalsoldier]

2. I'm getting between 4.5 and 5 hours of battery life, with the screen at no more than 25% brightness and doing nothing more than simple browsing. I would have hoped for something closer to 7 hours or so. I'm not sure why it's doing so poorly--the CPU seems to be throttling as it should and as I said screen brightness isn't excessive. And I'm fairly convinced this isn't going to improve, at least not with my machine.

Hmm...that is on the lower side though. With brightness at around 40%. Tethered to my phone's data connection, running three instances of Word, Edge (with 2 tabs open) and Xodo open with four documents up, I get about 7 hours. All background services running or at least I have no deliberately turned off anything.

 

[wynand32]

Hmm...that is on the lower side though. With brightness at around 40%. Tethered to my phone's data connection, running three instances of Word, Edge (with 2 tabs open) and Xodo open with four documents up, I get about 7 hours. All background services running or at least I have no deliberately turned off anything.

Yeah, I've seen reports of people getting closer to 7 hours. Never been my experience, makes me suspicious that there's something wrong with mine hardware-wise, but it would be a difficult argument to make for an exchange.

Mine is a Core i5/8GB/256GB version, incidentally, probably worth noting.

 

[alexd88]

1. mine is still freezing after update (most annoying thing for me) -when i wrote this post hase freezed for 6 times
2. battery life with 25% brightness just browsing and youtube 3-4 hours, no more since i bought it only once i have 6 hours.
3. Screen is flickering unde 15% for almost 1 year and they didn't solved it.
4. Bluethoot sometimes is disables itself even if i unchecked the box with power saving.
5. Sometimes touch screen in chrome is stop working on top bar, i need to close it and restart chrome to solve problem.
6. After update another problem appeared touchpad leftclik stoped working, needed to detach keyboard and reatach to solve it.
Conclusione Expensive toy witch look very nice but with a lot of problems.

 

[Becosemsaida]

OK, so lets try to help you out with MY experience and respond to your points:

1- Correct, mine is also and i adopted an "Android" aproach: KILL all apps that you don't use in the background. Seems that the RAM maxes out whilst the processor is making overtime...... For now seems to work, no multitasking though,
2- With the latest update i get no more then 3-4 hours either, just editing docs and light browsing (Edge)
3- At 15% i can't even see my screen !!! I bought it to use not to stay "stealth mode"
4- Bluetooth/WiFI was solved in an update after the AU.... Since i did a new install maybe it corrected itself. Check your drivers and try to update them from the manufactorer instead of the Microsoft site or auto-update
5- Chrome is a very nice app to eat all your RAM, try use other browsers, i heard good info about opera on this device (??) I use Edge and Firefox with add-ons.
6- Most problems with the touchpad is related to dirt or poor connection of it. Check if all the connections are free of dirt and move up and down smooth...... Had this problem and solved it taking better care of my keyboard cover.

Yep i agree, expensive toy, definitly not worth the money they ask for it and after almost a year these stupid things should have been solved or at least give the correct info to the user. 9H on battery i can achieve, just let it sit next to me and let it go to sleep... it will last more then advertised. I have seen people posting that there batt last 8-9H but when i ask how they do it i rarely get an answer. Disabling and compromise the functions of this device i will not do.

Beco

 

[wynand32]

As far as I can discern (from here and elsewhere), there must be at least couple of hardware variants out there. There are those who routinely get less than 5 hours of battery life with reasonable settings and those who get 7 hours or more. I don't see anything obvious to account for such a difference (like, people running at 100% brightness vs. people running at 10% brightness, or people who are continually gaming vs. people who are only doing light web browsing), and so I have to wonder if some of us have "better" machines than others.

By the way, I define "reasonable" settings as those within the range of a machine's intended design. Running in airplane mode with your screen so dim as to be unreadable and with every background task turned off isn't reasonable to me--no reasonable person would conclude that Microsoft's marketing of the machine intended that kind of usage. At the same time, running the screen at 100% while running high-end games also isn't reasonable. But running your screen at 30% with WiFi and Bluetooth turned on (the latter for full Pen support) and doing typical productivity tasks would seem reasonable, and given Microsoft's marketing I would expect at least 7 hours or so of battery life in such conditions. I'm not getting that.

To keep this post on topic, none of the firmware updates have measurably improved my battery life, even though some of them listed such improvements as a feature.

 

[kristalsoldier]

Yeah, I've seen reports of people getting closer to 7 hours. Never been my experience, makes me suspicious that there's something wrong with mine hardware-wise, but it would be a difficult argument to make for an exchange.

Mine is a Core i5/8GB/256GB version, incidentally, probably worth noting.

So is mine. I sure hope it is not a HW issue on your side. Regardless, good luck!!

 

[wynand32]

So is mine. I sure hope it is not a HW issue on your side. Regardless, good luck!!

Thanks!

 

[Gtfeckner]

I have seen people posting that there batt last 8-9H but when i ask how they do it i rarely get an answer.

That may be because most of us lucky enough to get that kind of battery life... simply do nothing special to achieve it, so there is nothing to answer about "how we do it".

If I use my device for light tasks such a as reading with kindle, browsing with edge or watching YouTube in low brightness I get 6.5-9 hours. Simple enough, but not particularly useful to you.

Very demanding tasks like 3D design software also drain my battery in 3-4 hours, so when I must do that, I always plug it in. That´s not a deal breaker for me, if it was, I would have bought a Surface Book.

Disabling and compromise the functions of this device i will not do. Beco

I don´t either. Unless using it indoors where you can set it to low brightness is a compromise.

I always said the same, and will continue to: I also had a miserable SP4 experience until I replaced my unit for a new one. It was not software, it was faulty hardware.

My new unit has yet to experience the first relevant problem, even the first crash (well, after AU my CPU was stuck at 1.5 GHz and battery life reduced a bit, but having that problem for 3 weeks wasn´t exactly dramatic for me...).

Maybe what Microsoft really sucks about... is about producing hardware...