Slashdot Mirror
Surface Pro 4 Owners Are Putting Their Tablets in Freezers To Fix Screen Flickering Issues (theverge.com)
Hundreds of Surface Pro 4 owners have been complaining about screen flickering issues on their tablets, and many are putting it in freezers to "fix" it. From a report: A thread over at Microsoft's support forums shows that the problems have been occurring for more than a year, and most devices affected are out of warranty. Dubbed "Flickergate," a website to report the issues claims at least 1,600 Surface Pro 4 owners have experienced the screen flickering problems. The flickering appears to be a hardware issue, which occurs after the device heats up during use. Some owners have even started freezing their tablets to stop the screen flickering temporarily. "I get about half an hour's use out of it after ten minutes in the freezer," says one owner. Another user posted a video showing how the flickering stops as soon as the Surface Pro 4 is placed in a freezer.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...put it in the fucking oven; it'll solve even more problems.
Sounds to me like the best place for the piece of junk! I will never own any Mickey$oft or "Rotten Apple" hardware ever again!
how about disassemble clean vents, check cooling elements?
Engineers neglecting heat caused by load are scum.
High performance ICs and minimal cooling result in high rates of change in temperature. This will put significant strain on the solder contacts. It is safer when parts heat up slowly so better cooling could prevent the damage from occurring.
Alternatively, Intel could modify their turbo mode so that it not only limits maximum temperature but also maximum rate of change in temperature. But before I place all the blame on Intel, do these things not contain NVidea GPUs? If so, that is the likely point of failure.
Why is this modded down?
It is a very good answer.
Cold solder joints have been a bitch for those of us who have rolled our own circuits since Moby Dick was a minnow.
Also, we used to troubleshoot heat problems in all kinds of electronics by cracking the hood and spraying isolated chips with cold air.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Inside was a box of Snickers bars, three Surface Pros and Jimmy Hoffa.
Jimmy Hoffa wasn't in there!
If it runs too hot and you can't underclock it, it is clearly the fault of the system integrator which is MS.
This is called a "koud kunstje" (cold trick = easy trick).
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
proof microsoft is using superconductors in their products now
MS is chalking up a truly horrible record on HW reliability.
Organization? You must be joking..
If it runs too hot and you can't underclock it, it is clearly the fault of the system integrator which is MS.
Wait just a moment ... do you mean, Microsoft fucked something up? I don't believe you.
Wow that's like the entire user base isn't it?
It's because with a name like that you know he's karma whoring and will use the points to troll later.
Why is this modded down?
It is a very good answer.
Cold solder joints have been a bitch for those of us who have rolled our own circuits since Moby Dick was a minnow.
Also, we used to troubleshoot heat problems in all kinds of electronics by cracking the hood and spraying isolated chips with cold air.
The same reason those who say the truth always get modded down: some poor baby felt "offended" (oh noes, not OFFENDED!?!?). The down-mod was done hastily as he or she retreated back to a safe space.
"I'm sorry if the correct way of doing things offends you."
Of course once someone claims to be offended two other conditions become true: 1) they feel entitled to dictate how someone else speaks and 2) they must never, ever be told to just get over it. This is the American Way and only a commie would question it!
This sounds like the iPhone 6 touch ID disease... cold solder joints. Putting it in a freezer or nuking it won't solve the problem... it might fix things for very short periods of time, but definitive fixes will probably be hard and expensive to do.
Weird how Surface Pro seems to always get both good and bad reputations overtime. From what I read, there are some very satisfied users that had great experiences with the thing, and then a flurry of users with defective products which Microsoft never fixes nor offers a reasonable solution for.
My screen is frozen
I remember back when Mac's had a similar video chip problem with Nvidia chips. Solder balls would break contact causing all sorts of issues. Eventually Apple had to replace the motherboards. Maybe this is why Microsoft Surface line barely showed life in last quarter results given these premium notebooks kind of have a lot of issues for a expensive notebook, and Microsoft addresses them very slowly and without concern for the owner. I wouldn't give you 10 bucks for any Surface product.
No one can get it right, besides the majority of all electronics with RoHS where contact problems like these don't occur, you mean?
Also, you have it the wrong way around: bad joints actually start *working* as soon as you heat them up (expand them) just a little bit, even before they've begun to reflow. This is not a cold solder joint problem, and even if it were, heat would be the solution. This is an overheating problem of one of the components.
Sounds like cold solder joints. Thermal contraction causes them to start touching again. This is what happens when you remove lead from your solder. Even a decade later, no one can get it right.
--The Moon Man
Yeah, there is an industry-wide issue with BGA packages, IR reflow soldering, and coplanarity of PCBs vs. the BGAs.
It causes things like recalls of laptops, so-called "Touch Disease" in phones, and other general annoyances and recalls.
And unfortunately, the relentless use of horrible RoHS solder has greatly exacerbated the problem, because ALL lead-free solder is less "malleable" (more brittle) than solder containing Lead; so add a few dozen thermal cycles, and...
Whil I am CERTAINLY no MS fan, I must come to their defense on this issue; because it ends up affecting nearly EVERY OEM that uses the now ubiquitous BGA packages, which a lot of high-pin-count ICs are ONLY offered in.
Do you have a newsletter I can subscribe to?
Or maybe it isn't? What happens when you remove lead from your solder is that you allow manufacturers to use smaller pads. And they took advantage of it.
Ezekiel 23:20
High performance ICs and minimal cooling result in high rates of change in temperature. This will put significant strain on the solder contacts. It is safer when parts heat up slowly so better cooling could prevent the damage from occurring.
Alternatively, Intel could modify their turbo mode so that it not only limits maximum temperature but also maximum rate of change in temperature. But before I place all the blame on Intel, do these things not contain NVidea GPUs? If so, that is the likely point of failure.
Oh, you mean you want Intel to intentionall THROTTLE their CPUs to extend the life of the products they are installed in?
Isn't that EXACTLY what many Slashdotters are wanting Apple's head for right now?
Can we stop calling everything blah-gate? It's so dated and retarded.
Also, we used to troubleshoot heat problems in all kinds of electronics by cracking the hood and spraying isolated chips with cold air.
yes indeed today people can pay good money for the privilege of debugging someone else's bad design decisions, people should look at it as a privilege just because you are too stupid to learn how to solder correctly
STFU with the apple lies
So what you're saying is, you should forget the freezer and instead just pop it in the oven for ten minutes to reflow the joints. Awesome.
I have a feeling this still has a better success rate than most windows 10 updates.
Alternatively, Intel could modify their turbo mode so that it not only limits maximum temperature but also maximum rate of change in temperature. But before I place all the blame on Intel, do these things not contain NVidea GPUs? If so, that is the likely point of failure.
I think only the Surface Book has the Nvidia dGPU.
I've had zero problems soldering sub-mm pitch (like 0.4mm) pads with good old 60/40. I've re-worked several GPU BGAs that way. Flux, pre-tin by hand with 60/40 and a fine chisel-point tip, clean, place GPU in place, re-flow with heat gun.
Still got this perfectly-fine 9800 GTX+, ready to rock after repair, not a single problem. You can't even tell it's had a repair job done to it.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I think the issue was more with simply not telling anybody about the change, leading to frustration by a genuinely invisible foe.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
You forgot to capitalize TRUTH and other random words, because BECAUSE.
Genuinely curious on how to do this without frying the chip/board. Even when I have things sent out for (allegedly) professional rework, they still occasionally screw it up (cold solder, solder bridge). Do you have a thermometer to monitor the component, or do you just "gut feel" it? With a heat gun, it feels like you'll get some pretty uneven heating, so to make sure everything melts, you might get some hot spots that exceed the max reflow T of the component. OTOH, if you've shortened the life of a GPU from 20yrs to 15yrs, you'd still probably never know/care. I've been afraid to try this myself due to all of the above.
-- "This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."
the relentless use of horrible RoHS solder has greatly exacerbated the problem, because ALL lead-free solder is less "malleable" (more brittle) than solder containing Lead; so add a few dozen thermal cycles, and... it ends up affecting nearly EVERY OEM that uses the now ubiquitous BGA packages, which a lot of high-pin-count ICs are ONLY offered in.
I'd hazard a guess that this shortsighted RoHS regulation has actually increased the quantity of hazardous materials from entering the waste stream since it's increased the number of devices being binned by users. If we can find an alternative to leaded solder then great but in the meantime this is madness and benefits no one... I'm carrying on using leaded solder with my own creations because I want them to last.
Soldering correctly doesn't require intelligence, just practice.
I used to work at a company with an entire team of the most idiotic morons, but they could solder anything perfectly while I was still trying to figure out where to plug things in. Those guys were fantastic at soldering, but just generally not too bright.
So, we've got one company (Apple) that gets dragged over the coals when they introduce throttling to avoid issues related to hardware wear (Apple throttle to avoid using more current from a battery that can not provide it), now we have Microsoft (maybe) getting dragged over the coals for not including any throttling in order to avoid the rapid heating of the hardware that induces wear on the components. The computer industry is damned if they do and damned if they don't.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
I think the issue was more with simply not telling anybody about the change, leading to frustration by a genuinely invisible foe.
No, it wasn't.
For most people (and lawsuits), the issue was the tinfoil-hat-powered belief that Apple was throttling iPhones in in a darkly-motivated, conspiratorial attempt to TRICK people into buying new iPhones, rather than just replacing their battery (which was only $79 even BEFORE Apple reduced the price).
The fact that Apple didn't, IN THEIR (and pretty much every other OEM's)TYPICAL FASHION, explain IN DETAIL what that particular "improvement" did, was just used as an EXCUSE to bolster the tinfoil-hat-pseudo-logic.
the relentless use of horrible RoHS solder has greatly exacerbated the problem, because ALL lead-free solder is less "malleable" (more brittle) than solder containing Lead; so add a few dozen thermal cycles, and... it ends up affecting nearly EVERY OEM that uses the now ubiquitous BGA packages, which a lot of high-pin-count ICs are ONLY offered in.
I'd hazard a guess that this shortsighted RoHS regulation has actually increased the quantity of hazardous materials from entering the waste stream since it's increased the number of devices being binned by users. If we can find an alternative to leaded solder then great but in the meantime this is madness and benefits no one... I'm carrying on using leaded solder with my own creations because I want them to last.
I couldn't agree more!
RoHS solder has absolutely NO PLACE on my home workbench, and it is quite telling that where high-reliability is paramount, (e.g., Aerospace applications), and where lead is an essential part of an essential component (e.g. Automotive batteries), that RoHS was "exempted".
And other posters, please spare me the bullshit that car batteries can be switched to LiPo. They can, but not cost, or size, competitively.
I was travelling and wanted to stream the NBA Finals on my laptop. Unfortunately my old laptop kept overheating and locking up. Since I had a really long video cable I put it in the small freezer and voila - ran like a champ :-)
Greed is the root of all evil.
The issue is a design flaw with the system pulling more power then the battery can supply when the battery is at 80% of use. apple put a laptop cpu ( and bragged to the world about it) in a device with a minuscule battery in it. This is what they are using the throttling code to hide. Pretty much everything else is smoke and mirror from apple and their blind worshippers
I don't pay attention to name.
That's /.'s fucking wheelhouse.
I don't give a flying rat's ass about gender or country or AC anything else.
I read the goddam comment.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
It isn't a matter of stupidity.
It's more of an issue of primitive technology.
Later, in this man's US Navy, I worked in a clean room where we soldered/desoldered hybrid integrated circuits (ca. 1970) and examiners were hard pressed to determine a before and after.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Has anyone patted you down for drugs lately?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
That's what it should be, but for people to learn that they'd have to actually read past the headlines of "Apple intentionally slowing your old phone".
This is what happens when you remove lead from your solder. Even a decade later, no one can get it right.
It has nothing to do with lead in solder. The only thing that lead free solder needs to work properly is a different temperature profile, and those profiles are well known and published by the companies manufacturing not only the solder but also the packages that will be soldered. Man we've been fixing cold solder joints since back when we poured lead into our gasoline tanks. Some companies fuck up some production runs due to poor quality control. This has been the case since the dawn of ... well ... production.
mine stops flickering when i turn it off. thats the best way to stop the flickering.
I have a surface 4 pro and experience this. It seems to be caused for me by limited granularity of the backlight dimming controller. Turning off autodim more or less resolves it. My screen and backlight are also not stock. I originally busted my lcd. Replaced it myself. The old one did it, and the new one does too.
Soldering today isn't using a soldering iron and 60/40 solder.
It's precision stenciling solder paste on a PC board, using "pick and place" equipment to stick the components in the solder paste, then ramping up the while assembly's temperature in a controlled fashion so it doesn't boil solder paste and spatter on adjacent connections.
We won't get in to double sided boards with through hole components here.
Simple.
Lead in solder is a very small aspect of lead that was previously found in landfills (it's recycled now). The primary culprit was lead/acid storage batteries.
Europe first drove RoHS and the U.S. had to follow up.
Agreed that the Pb-free solder is terrible to work with and prone to mechanical fatigue.
Awful stuff to try and solder with.
and at most, no?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Does it account for the freezer you have to carry out all the time?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Lead in solder is a very small aspect of lead that was previously found in landfills (it's recycled now). The primary culprit was lead/acid storage batteries.
Europe first drove RoHS and the U.S. had to follow up.
Agreed that the Pb-free solder is terrible to work with and prone to mechanical fatigue.
Awful stuff to try and solder with.
I know.
As an embedded developer, I lived through the debacle that was the EU Idiots dragging the US along by the nose with their perhaps well-meaning, but technically-bereft policy, that in one fell swoop, absolutely RUINED consumer and industrial electronics reliability over the ENTIRE PLANET.
Yes, RoHS solder-proof solder is a cruel joke.
Hey EU!! There's a fucking REASON that LEAD has been used to eutectically join a wide variety of metals together for MILLENIA!!! It just fucking WORKS!!!
strikes again! LOL! Overpriced garbage.
Lead Free solder (aka RoHS compliant assembly) is not universally mandated in every application, for example it's use is banned (prohibited) in most aerospace and military contracts (you have to certify no lead-free solders are used), and with NASA. Also lead solder is allowed in any automotive application. There are multiple reasons for this, but essentially it boils down to reliability.
Modern (as in 2018 versus 2008) lead-free assemblies are much better in this respect, but there is still a difference with the smallest traces and component leads.
For hand-assembly, there are good techniques established to do a good solder joint. A large part of the success does rely on the fact that it's hand assembled, with the care and post-assembly examination by a competent human wielding the iron. Not to be confused with a whole-board assembly which will be automated or use wave soldering or some other non-hand method.
Heat management (for the guy asking about harming the motherboard) is necessary, but fine tips and heat-controlled irons are the norm. A good iron (I like HAKKO, but there are others) will maintain a set temperature during rest and while applying the iron without much issue.
EXACTLY this!!! Less and less people are falling for apples bullshit anymore , those days are long over.
Absolute nonsense, and if you believe it you're a moron. I guess if you don't believe it and said it anyways, it makes you an asshole. Some choice, eh?
No, that's not what this situation is like at all. Apple is accused of manipulating the speed of the device without even telling the user in order to make the device appear "old" to people who don't know better. The complaint is that the behavior is deception, manipulative, and potentially fraudulent.
Microsoft is accused of making a product that is less configurable than normal products used with their software, and users are suffering real problems of aging components that would be easily worked-around with standard configuration access.
And you respond to that with, basically, "ugga wugga?"
You don't understand what is going on, so what makes you think you understand the implications?
Along these lines is the change from HASL PC board coatings to immersion silver.
Put these PC boards in a bad environment like China or India where they use high sulfur fuels and it gets in to the air.
Use that air to cool the PC boards (by blowing it with cooling fans) and you get corrosion of the silver plated PC board traces. Over time, the traces short with the corrosion byproduct and viola! Failed PC assembly.
This is particularly a problem with (but not limited to) hard drives.
I've seen hundreds of the fail due to this mechanism in my life as a failure analysis engineer.
One bank in China had over 100 HDDs in their array fail in a month.
Incubation period for the failure is temperature and humidity dependent. Typically, it takes 1-2 years to fail.
We performed EDS analysis to confirm the situation.
Along these lines is the change from HASL PC board coatings to immersion silver.
Put these PC boards in a bad environment like China or India where they use high sulfur fuels and it gets in to the air.
Use that air to cool the PC boards (by blowing it with cooling fans) and you get corrosion of the silver plated PC board traces. Over time, the traces short with the corrosion byproduct and viola! Failed PC assembly.
This is particularly a problem with (but not limited to) hard drives.
I've seen hundreds of the fail due to this mechanism in my life as a failure analysis engineer.
One bank in China had over 100 HDDs in their array fail in a month.
Incubation period for the failure is temperature and humidity dependent. Typically, it takes 1-2 years to fail.
We performed EDS analysis to confirm the situation.
VERY interesting!
I wonder if that's why BackBlaze (or was it Google?) found that HIGH HUMIDITY was MUCH more likely to cause HDD failure than was High Temperature alone?
A. IR Thermometer to monitor component temp and board temp
B. Shield everything else other than the GPU with aluminum foil
C. Use a heat gun with a large nozzle (IE one you'd buy from Home Depot, not one used for soldering) from a good distance, and slowly bring it closer to bring up to reflow temp.
D. KEEP USING THAT IR THERMOMETER. CHECK EVERYWHERE WHILE YOU HEAT.
E. Even heating is your friend, don't just slam the nozzle against the GPU. Keep your distance.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
1. Sign our petition https://www.change.org/p/microsoft-microsoft-surface-pro-4-screen-flickering-or-blurry?recruiter=845560982&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition
490 followers
2. The class action was filed early this week, sign up. https://www.consumerclassactionlawyers.com/microsoft-surface-pro-4-flickering-screen-class-action-lawsuit-investigation.html?t=1&cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjc18y&refsrc=email&iid=796f05f2076843059645d6e99399ea98&uid=734867867334791168&nid=244+281088008
3. Copy this message and post it everywhere you can
Cool beans. I always thought one of those IR thermometers would be cool to have. It's perpetually on the list of "would like to have some day".
-- "This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."
If they "owned" and forced excessive control on all the hardware and software and it worked out badly, they have to "own" the problem.