The Surface Pro 3 has been plagued with Wi-Fi annoyances since it released in April of this year. At least, that's what the reports say, and fixing it has been the major focus for Microsoft when releasing updates to its self-branded tablet. Personally, I've not experienced Wi-Fi problems, so I can't speak with any real sense of knowledge about the matter (guess I'm just one of those lucky people). However, if you just sift through social media and Microsoft's own Surface forums, you'll quickly see a multitude of threads containing customer complaints.
Microsoft spared us from any Surface model firmware updates during Patch Tuesday this month, most likely due to the critical nature of the updates, along with the large number of patches released. But, that doesn’t mean we're out of the woods yet. Last month (October), Microsoft released an out-of-band firmware update for the Surface Pro 3, and with the end of November still a couple weeks away, it looks like we can expect another misplaced update yet this month.
Without setting a hard date, Microsoft took to its blogs yesterday to give a sort of roadmap for Surface Pro 3 functions that will be addressed in an update to release soon. So, the update is coming, and we now know what fixes to expect, we just still don't have any idea exactly when it will release.
Per Microsoft, here's what's coming…
Surface Pro UEFI update (v3.11.350.0)
- Resolves scenarios where the device will boot to a black screen if McAfee Defense Encryption 7.1.1 is installed.
- Optimizes the FWPOST time to 3.7 seconds with the fast boot enabled.
- Prevents situations where system clock loses time when battery falls below 3%.
Surface Home Button driver update (v2.0.1174.0)
- Along with the pen update below, this helps prevent scenarios where device may accidentally wake up from sleep while being stored or carried.
Surface Pen Settings driver update (v2.5.14.0)
- Along with the home button driver update above, this helps to prevent scenarios where the device may accidentally wake up from sleep while being stored or carried.
Wireless Network Controller and Bluetooth driver update (v15.68.3066.135)
- Enables better throughput after waking from sleep and connecting to an 802.11AC network.
- Ensures Infra scan list is not empty while connected to a wireless display adapter.
- Resolves an issue connecting to Cisco 1242 access points.
- Ensures device reconnects properly to a hidden SSID using a 5Ghz DFS channel after waking from sleep.
- Adds customer-requested functionality to prefer 5Ghz connections when both a 2.4ghz and 5ghz connection are present with the same SSID.
This isn't the first time Microsoft has delivered Surface updates outside the normal Patch Tuesday. In fact, Microsoft delivered two updates per month in July, August, and October. I don't even remember Microsoft ever stating that Surface firmware updates would follow the normal Patch Tuesday schedule as official policy. Before you start checking Windows Update constantly for the proposed fixes, check back here. We'll let you know when the firmware updates go live.
