It seems that Microsoft finally addressed the persistent power-management issues plaguing its Surface Book and Surface Pro 4, with new firmware updates now rolling out.
The June firmware updates from Microsoft arrived not only for the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book, but also for the previous-generation Surface Pro 3.
For the latest flagships, battery issues particularly in sleep mode have been marring the experience from the very beginning. Back in December, Microsoft apologized for the Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 issues and promised to issue a comprehensive update this year to fix a number of inconveniences.
While the two flagships had a number of bugs and problems, the more persistent issue and the one users complained about most was the battery drain in sleep mode. Normally, a device should conserve battery life while in sleep mode, but for some reason the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book did the exact opposite. The issue reportedly stemmed from power-management problems related to the Intel Skylake processors.
Microsoft released an update in January this year to fix various bugs affecting the Surface Book and Surface Pro 4, but no sleep bug fix was included. The company finally addressed the issue in another update back in February and has been released a number of firmware updates since then to further improve the battery efficiency.
It remains to be seen whether the sleep bug issues are gone for good, but the latest firmware update should bring additional improvements in the battery department.
The Surface Pro 4 gets two driver updates, while the Surface Book received three driver updates. Both devices get a new driver for Surface UEFI, which claims to improve the system's stability when resuming operation from sleep and hibernation. At the same time, this driver also brings battery performance optimizations in connected standby.
Surface Book owners have also been complaining about the device shutting down all of a sudden while in sleep mode, and a driver in the latest firmware update should fix the issue.
Another driver for both the Surface Book and the Surface Pro 4 will fix the issue causing the touchscreen to remain active even when the clipboard is closed against the keyboard.
If you haven't updated your device already, head over to Microsoft's site to grab the latest Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book firmware updates. If you've already installed them, drop by our comment section below and share your experience. Does it fix the issues, or are you still having trouble with power management?
