Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book machines have significantly boosted the company’s efforts in creating Windows 10 halo devices that push the platform forward. Not only has the Surface line arguably succeeded in compelling Windows 10 OEMs to make some great machines themselves, but Surface itself has become a viable business for Microsoft in its own right.
At the same time, Microsoft has suffered from a host of hardware and software issues on both the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book, while issuing a number of firmware and driver updates aimed at resolving them. A short history of some of the issues:
- Display stability causing screen feedback to lag and crash at random times, updated on 12/2/2015
- Failure to enter sleep properly, causing battery loss and overheating when in a case
- Failure of display to respond when waking from “sleep”, with a workaround
Microsoft made a number of promises to fix the sleep issue, including efforts to allow the Intel Skylake processors to enter the deepest sleep states and thus maintain the best battery life. The company’s communications around the issue led to the “very hard computer science problem” statement that has been repeated and lampooned by a number of industry writers.
Yes, The ‘standby’ battery life is an issue we are working on and have been working on. We can put the processor into a deeper sleep state than it is currently set to. We couldn’t do it at RTM for a variety of reasons, power management is a very hard computer science problem to solve especially with new silicon. Currently it is not in the deepest “sleep” that it can be so there are wake events that would not otherwise wake it. We will have an update for this issue sometime soon in the new year.
Today, Microsoft finally released updates aimed at resolving these issues. There are a number of separate updates that are applied in as many as four (or more) separate update sessions, as Microsoft indicates in their blog post.
Building devices people love is what drives our team. It’s why we come in to work every morning and it’s what keeps us up at night. And feedback from our customers is really important to the team and to me personally. I read the blogs, I read the comments, I read social media, I read the forums…and so does the team. We love the energy. We’re listening and channeling that feedback directly into our products. Today we’re releasing an update to continue to address that feedback.
Today’s updates include a set of Microsoft and Intel driver and firmware updates for Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 that will help you get the most of the power management options that Surface is designed to offer and continue to make your Surface more productive.
Surface Book product shot facing rightWe love our Surface customers. You are our early adopters and our fans and you keep inspiring us with what you are able to do with Surface. You keep pushing us to make Surface even better.
We are committed to continuing to improve Surface – to keep pushing out updates to make your device more awesome. And to continue to help all our customers realize the full benefits of the latest silicon and Windows 10. With that in mind, one of the most important steps you can take is to ensure your Surface is up-to-date with the fixes we post on Windows Update.
Here’s what’s updated on each machine, and it’s quite a list:
Surface Pro 4
– System Hardware Update – 2/17/2016
– Microsoft driver update for Surface UEFI
– Microsoft driver update for Surface Management Engine
– Microsoft driver update for Surface System Aggregator Firmware
– Surface Management Engine update (v11.0.0.1202) improves system stability.
– Surface System Aggregator Firmware update (v103.1081.260.0) improves accuracy of battery status and battery life during sleep.
– Surface UEFI update (v104.1085.768.0) improves battery life and improves stability during power state transition changes into and out of sleep states.
– Intel Precise Touch Device driver update (v1.1.0.226) improves stability during power state transition changes into and out of sleep states.
– Intel HD Graphics 520 driver update (v20.19.15.4364) improves display stability, system stability and battery life.
– Intel Display Audio driver update (v8.20.0.745) supports compatibility with the updated graphics driver.
– Realtek High Definition Audio(SST) driver update (v6.0.1.7734) improves system stability.
– Intel Smart Sound Technology (Intel SST) Audio Controller driver update (v8.20.0.866) improves system stability.
– Intel Smart Sound Technology (Intel SST) OED driver update (v8.20.0.866) improves system stability.
– Intel Management Engine Interface driver update (v11.0.0.1176) improves system stability.
– Intel Serial IO GPIO Host Controller driver update (v30.63.1603.5) improves auto rotation reliability when tablet mode is turned off.
– Intel Serial IO I2C Host Controller driver update (v30.63.1603.5) improves auto rotation
Surface Book
– System Hardware Update – 2/17/2016
– Microsoft driver update for Surface UEFI
– Microsoft driver update for Surface Management Engine
– Microsoft driver update for Surface System Aggregator Firmware
– Surface Management Engine update (v11.0.0.1202) improves system stability.
– Surface System Aggregator Firmware update (v88.1081.257.0) improves accuracy of battery status and battery life during sleep.
– Surface UEFI update (v104.1085.768.0) improves battery life and improves stability during power state transition changes into and out of sleep states.
– Intel Precise Touch Device driver update (v1.1.0.226) improves stability during power state transition changes into and out of sleep states.
– Intel HD Graphics 520 driver update (v20.19.15.4364) improves display stability, system stability and battery life.
– Intel Display Audio driver update (v8.20.0.745) supports compatibility with the updated graphics driver.
– Realtek High Definition Audio(SST) driver update (v6.0.1.7734) improves system stability.
– Intel Smart Sound Technology (Intel® SST) Audio Controller driver update (v8.20.0.866) improves system stability.
– Intel Smart Sound Technology (Intel® SST) OED driver update (v8.20.0.866) improves system stability.
– Intel Management Engine Interface driver update (v11.0.0.1176) improves system stability.
– Intel Serial IO GPIO Host Controller driver update (v30.63.1603.5) improves auto rotation reliability when tablet mode is turned off.
– Intel Serial IO I2C Host Controller driver update (v30.63.1603.5) improves auto rotation reliability when tablet mode is turned off.
– Surface Book Base Firmware driver update (v1.2.0.0) improves battery life during sleep.
Be patient, and allow all of the updates to apply and the machine to reboot multiple times. Hopefully, when all is said and done, these industry-leading machines will finally live up to their potential. Should these issues be resolved, then Microsoft will be upholding its promises to listen to its customers, not only in designing Windows 10 via the Windows Insider program but also recently opting to start publishing detailed update information.
Let us know in the comments if you’re finding the issues to be resolved. As always, you can go to Microsoft Surface community to keep up with the latest discussions around the Surface machines, and check out Microsoft Support for more help.
Further reading: Firmware, Intel, Microsoft, Skylake, Surface, Surface Book, Surface Pro 4, update
