Enlarge / Surface Pro 3. (credit: Peter Bright)

Back in July, Microsoft acknowledged that some Surface Pro 3 systems were seeing their battery life drop to as little as a few minutes, apparently the result of a firmware bug of some kind. The fix for this is now out (via Mary Jo Foley).

The fix is a firmware update dated 29 August that must be installed while the system is charged and plugged in. It apparently takes as couple of reboots to install and, over the course of the next few battery cycles, the batteries will return to their correct charge level. The problem is caused by something in the Surface Pro 3’s firmware causing the maximum charge to be improperly reported, causing undercharging. There are two brands of batteries used in Microsoft’s two-in-one slabs, Simplo and LG. Although there are some reports of problems with the LG batteries, it is the Simplo ones that appear to be the main victims.

Early reports from Microsoft’s support forums suggest that, for many at least, the firmware fix does indeed do the trick.