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Author Topic: Battery Draining Whilst Plugged In?  (Read 2633 times)

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rjbinney

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Battery Draining Whilst Plugged In?
« on: November 09, 2016, 01:10:28 PM »
I have an eleven-day old Surface Pro 4 running Win 10.

It has been plugged in all night, and I noticed about ten minutes ago that it is at 96 percent and charging.

I ran a battery report:

(At 1152 I unplugged and plugged back in, otherwise it has been plugged in for the last 12 hours at least).

Now, I AM running this thing hard right now. I have a Word doc open that I SHOULD be working oni, Firefox open while I read Newspapers of the world, and I have this thing converting a 14GB GoPro video.

Also, it has been holding at 96 percent, at least for the 15 minutes it has taken me o run the report, save the screenshot, and type this...
Dan: You're gonna need to get someone to fix my computer.                     Kim: What's wrong with it?                     Dan: It's in several pieces on my floor.

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Re: Battery Draining Whilst Plugged In?
« Reply #1 on: November 09, 2016, 01:57:17 PM »
.
Hello, your question is very important. This has been observed on other models of laptops and there has, to my knowledge, never been a clear and well expressed explanation of this. In my personal opinion, laptop makers have done a poor job of explaining how the battery system works and what the user should do.
Some investigation shows that these types of batteries should not be left on a charger and definitely. Charging the unit actually generates some heat and represents a waste of energy. The battery is capable of keeping most of it charge without having a steady stream going into it 24 hours a day. There are some references to indicate that this procedure of a 24-hour charge may actually be dangerous or shorten the life of a lithium-ion battery.
However, if you think there's something wrong with your new laptop, take advantage of the warranty positions right away. As you may know, the laptop manufacturers have been very reluctant to identify battery problems in a timely manner. Sometimes users find himself outside of the warranty. When a danger has been identified by the manufacture. So, if you have doubts about the quality of the battery in your computer, contact the vendor or the manufacturer right away.
Now, having said that, there's just too much conjecture and speculation about how the battery systems are supposed to work in a laptop battery. This has got to be the fault of the manufacturers themselves of not making clear exactly how the systems are supposed to work.
The following observations are not my opinion nor are they conjecture. This is based on documented material that has been published in papers for engineers and technicians who work with the sort of thing. Normally lithium ion and similar battery types should charge to near full capacity in a reasonable amount of time. This is usually much less than eight hours and in some cases only takes four hours to go from almost 0 to near 100%. This has been documented elsewhere.
Sometimes it is specified that at least once you should leave the system on overnight for complete charge. Yes, that also has been documented. But it does not mean you would do that habitually. The document states this would be done the first time you use the device you would charge it overnight. From then on, only a short period of time should be needed to charge the unit to its full capacity.
While using the units at home or in your office you can plug the charger into the AC power in order to conserve battery energy and to provide a brighter display. Even so, you should unplug the charger from the wall after you shut down your computer.
I am aware that many others disagree with this and think you can just leave it plugged in all the time. But most of the real technical documentation does not support this conclusion.
Personally, I do justly the thing plugged in all of time. Because I'm too lazy to unplug it or I forget to unplug it. So I phoned the habit of just leaving it plugged in all the time until later I think about it and realize that I'm not doing the battery in a good by leaving it plugged in all the time.
I hope this is of some help to you. If you need links to documents that support this kind of reasoning, please some come back and say you'd like to see where this information is found.

rjbinney

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Re: Battery Draining Whilst Plugged In?
« Reply #2 on: November 09, 2016, 02:39:19 PM »
Thanks. I know there's lots of discussion and opinions on battery management; I'd never really considered the bit about keeping it plugged in while not in use.

What I wasn't able to gather from your reply, though, is why the battery would drain while it was plugged in. As soon as the video was done rendering, it shot back up to 100 percent.

What it APPEARS to be is, while the processer was being heavily taxed, the machine was using 100+ X% of the AC power to do its work - so it had to tap into the battery for that X%. I didn't know it could do that. And power management is similar to many UPS systems that actively run off the battery but maintain charge.
Dan: You're gonna need to get someone to fix my computer.                     Kim: What's wrong with it?                     Dan: It's in several pieces on my floor.

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Re: Battery Draining Whilst Plugged In?
« Reply #3 on: November 09, 2016, 04:31:29 PM »
What it APPEARS to be is, while the processer was being heavily taxed, the machine was using 100+ X% of the AC power to do its work - so it had to tap into the battery for that X%. I didn't know it could do that. And power management is similar to many UPS systems that actively run off the battery but maintain charge.

Yep, that's almost certainly the case. usually the setup is such that when a battery is installed the system runs entirely off the battery, and the AC connection will work to keep it charged. But depending on the AC Adapter you could draw more power from the battery than the Adapter can provide to charge up the battery.

In this case using the Surface Pro 4 at full throttle- especially if you have the model with the dGPU- can drain power faster than the AC adapter can  provide it.
I was trying to dereference Null Pointers before it was cool.

rjbinney

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Re: Battery Draining Whilst Plugged In?
« Reply #4 on: November 09, 2016, 04:39:20 PM »
OK, just making sure this is expected behavior and not an anomaly.

The folks at the Microsoft Store and me are not on great terms with each other.

(Looks like I accidentally erased my tweet of this:
)

Thanks
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Re: Battery Draining Whilst Plugged In?
« Reply #5 on: November 09, 2016, 07:41:02 PM »
Even engineers who know better have made errors with design of lithium ion battery systems. There is a real danger of 'thermal runway'  that can not be controlled.
I posted a story in the Off Topic area.

How Lithium Ion Batteries Grounded the Dreamliner


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Re: Battery Draining Whilst Plugged In?
« Reply #6 on: November 09, 2016, 09:10:49 PM »
I don't think there is any reason to shoehorn tangentially related content into other threads.
I was trying to dereference Null Pointers before it was cool.

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Re: Battery Draining Whilst Plugged In?
« Reply #7 on: November 09, 2016, 09:58:31 PM »
I don't think there is any reason to shoehorn tangentially related content into other threads.
OK, instead of that, I will just say the Surface Pro battery system is a basket case.

It comes from tech people not knowing  how Lithium Ion works. It is a dangerous technology that will continue to cause property damage before it gets fixed.  It is a new recipient of the saying 'Halt and Catch Fire.'.
If MS can not fix this, they may have to pull the Surface Pro off the market. And it may take a couple of months for the details to become public. Meanwhile, the OP needs to be right on top of Microsoft support to protect his investment.

References:
http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/29/12700846/microsoft-surface-pro-3-battery-issue-fix-released

https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/microsoft-surface/73079/surface-pro-3s-simplo-batteries-responsible-microsofts-newest-surface-headache

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/tablets/microsoft-surface-pro-4-1290285/review/3/

The are many, many references that say some thing bad about the battery system.
How many would  you need?


And it is not just the Surface Pro 3. Other models fall short ot the safety and reliability the users expect. Microsoft has advertised  the Surface pro having longer battery life than what really happens. That is a stupid mistake.
« Last Edit: November 09, 2016, 10:13:29 PM by Geek-9pm »