Surface Pro X receives firmware update that improves Microsoft Teams and stability

Surface Pro X (Image credit: Daniel Rubino / Windows Central)

What you need to know

A new firmware update is available for the Surface Pro X.
The update improves the Microsoft Teams app experience and includes several stability improvements.
You can grab the update now through Windows Update.

Microsoft's Surface Pro X has a new firmware update available. The update improves the Microsoft Teams app experience and includes several updates that improve the device's stability. The list of changes is relatively lengthy, at least when compared to some other firmware updates. Along with those already mentioned, the update's changes include improvements to adaptive brightness and Bluetooth connection reliability.

Here's a look at the release notes from the Surface Update History page (opens in new tab):

Qualcomm(R) Adreno (TM) 680 GPU - 26.18.0901.8000 - improves the Teams app experience.
Qualcomm(R) Bluetooth UART Transport Driver - 1.0.830.0 - improves BT connection reliability.
Qualcomm(R) Bus Device - 1.0.1000.0000 - improves system stability.
Qualcomm(R) Hexagon (TM) 690 DSP - 1.0.1020.1000 - improves system stability.
Qualcomm(R) Hexagon (TM) 690 DSP - 1.0.1020.1000 - improves system stability.
Qualcomm(R) Spectra (TM) 390 ISP - 1.0.900.0 - improves system stability while using the camera.
Qualcomm(R) Spectra (TM) 390 ISP - 1.0.900.0 - improves system stability while using the camera.
Qualcomm(R) Spectra (TM) 390 ISP - 1.0.900.0 - improves system stability while using the camera.
Qualcomm(R) Spectra (TM) 390 ISP - 1.0.900.0 - improves system stability while the using camera.
Qualcomm(R) Spectra (TM) 390 ISP - 1.0.900.1 - improves system stability while the using camera.
Qualcomm(R) Spectra (TM) 390 ISP - 1.0.900.1- improves system stability while using the camera.
Qualcomm(R) Spectra (TM) 390 ISP - 1.0.900.1 - improves system stability while using the camera.
Qualcomm(R) System Manager Device - 1.0.820.0 - improves system stability.
Qualcomm(R) System Manager Device - 1.0.900.0 - improves system stability.
Qualcomm(R) Wi-Fi B/G/N/AC (2x2) Svc - 1.0.860.0 - improves connection reliability.
Surface Camera AVStream Mini Driver - 1.0.900.1 - improves system stability while using the camera.
Surface Hid Mini Driver - 3.10.139.0 - improves system stability.
Surface Integration Driver - 20.74.139.0 - improves adaptive brightness.
Surface Light Sensor - 1.35.139.0 - improves adaptive brightness.
Surface Radio Monitor - 3.13.139.0 - improves connectivity performance in the tablet mode.
Surface UEFI - 3.462.140.0 - improves system stability.

You can grab the update through Windows Update, though Microsoft points out that Surface updates are released in stages. If you don't see the firmware update now, check back in after some time to grab the update.

Sleeker Surface

Surface Pro X

On the go

The Surface Pro X is a drastic redesign of Microsoft's Surface Pro line, slimming everything down with an ARM processor and LTE connectivity.

Sean Endicott brings nearly a decade of experience covering Microsoft and Windows news to Windows Central. He joined our team in 2017 as an app reviewer and now heads up our day-to-day news coverage. If you have a news tip or an app to review, hit him up at sean.endicott@futurenet.com (opens in new tab).

19 Comments

I wonder if Qualcomm will continue providing driver updates to its Windows on ARM platforms (like this one) beyond the usual 2 years that it does for Android.
I assume they would since PCs tend to have longer upgrade cycles than phones.
Pretty sure Microsoft requires all OEMs (or at least chip manufacturers) to provide 5 years of support. Which is a change for Qualcomm, since they very much like having a short term support window.
I wonder why Microsoft hasn't built teams as a React Native UWP for ARM. It wouldn't require emulation that way. That'd probably improve performance way more than a firmware update.
That's probably the question of the day... I think we will learn a lot about Microsoft's commitment to ARM in the next few months, with Apple on tap for ARM Macs in 2021. I like my SPX, but it would be on another level if they would just migrate a few tools to ARM - especially some lightweight dev environments - VS Code.
Office as a whole is still 32bit on ARM. They can start just by re-compiling all Office apps..
"Office as a whole is still 32bit on ARM."
That's not accurate and I wish people would stop saying that. Office is ported to ARM and runs natively; parts of it show itself to the OS as 32-bit BUT ONLY TO TRICK third-party plugins to work. It's called a shim:
"Shims for older APIs typically come about when the behavior of an API changes, thereby causing compatibility issues for older applications which still rely on the older functionality; in such cases, the older API can still be supported by a thin compatibility layer on top of the newer code. Shims for newer APIs are defined as: "a library that brings a new API to an older environment, using only the means of that environment."
In other words, Office "catfishes" the OS and plugins.
Yup, another way of putting it.
This conflicts directly with what Microsoft is saying. According to MS's documentation, Office on ARM is 32-bit only. While it is complied for ARM (no emulation), it is restricted to 32-bit address space, meaning that there's a limit to the memory it can access. This really only is an issue for large PowerPoint slide decks or Excel spreadsheets, but could still be a limitation that using Office on a 64-bit Intel machine simply doesn't have.
What I am telling you is accurate. It's a mix of ARM64 and 32-bit. It is not running in straight emulation like normal 32-bit x86 apps.
I went to the Office site and downloaded the 64 bit version of Office and the installer failed stating this version is not compatible. So I installed the 32bit version. Predictably, I can see in Task Manager it's running (32 bit).
I've been following Windows Central and Dan for a while. Dan has good sources and doesn't publish fake information. He just explained why it says 32bit above, I see no reason to doubt his info.
Not true. https://channel9.msdn.com/events/Build/2018/BRK2438 skip to 36:00 to hear how it works.
Why can't I install the 64bit version of Office? I get an error saying it's incompatible. Dan is super credible so maybe I'm misunderstanding? Rschoneman's video seems to contradict Dan's explanation.
You can't Install the 64bit version of Office because Office, on SPX, runs as an x86-32 application. There is no natively compiled version of Office for ARM (32 or 64 bit). W10 on SPX makes heavy utilization of the WOW64 emulator to allow 32bit x86 applications as well as 32bit ARM applications to run on a 64bit ARM architecture. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/winprog64/wow64-implement...
Whether or not the Office 32bit claim is true, as a heavy Office user I'm pretty sure I don't need more than 4GB of memory at any given time. It's not exactly video editing software. I think the biggest excel files I use are about 500MB - not sure how that translates to RAM usage but surely it's not 4GB.
I've seen Teams (esp during video conferences) and Outlook both go well beyond 500mb of RAM. Maybe these firmware updates (which haven't shown up for me yet) will fix how buggy Teams is for me on my SPX. I'd hope native apps perform better with less crashes.
Teams on SPX has been my biggest disappointment and that's saying a lot since I love both. Since Teams is an Electron app it's basically Chromium with a wrapper to help with things like notifications, media, etc. Until Teams is re-compiled to ARM64 (Electron supports it) it'll be laggy and buggy - IMO. https://www.electronjs.org/docs/tutorial/windows-arm

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