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June 19th, 2014 16:00

Active Stylus version A02 and horrible battery life.

Does this stylus ever auto-shut off or does it just go into sleep mode? I bought version A02 on June 7. The last time I used it was on June 11. On June 19, I found out that the battery is completely dead. I only used it for five days barely. Even if the battery died today, we're still talking about less than two weeks of mostly just sitting in my drawer.

I'm wondering if it's because I put the stylus right next to my tablet in my drawer. But then my tablet is completely powered off. With my V8P completely off, storing the stylus right next to the tablet shouldn't matter, right? I don't know what's going on.

184 Posts

June 21st, 2014 10:00

was same here. The original ones had expiration date of 2018 but I do believe that Dell or the Stylus manufacture buys them in huge wholesale and as it's known buying that way a lot are not up to par. :-)
The A02 works now around 7 to 8 weeks with replacement battery.
A01 for about 2 weeks longer.
We don't use them constantly but long enough to see a huge difference compared to original batteries.
I also purchased the batteries from Amazon and not in local retail stores (because of price). 14 for $10. They also came with expiration date 2018. :-) I would day if you replace the battery and it's drained within a few days again that you have a faulty Stylus.

Not knowing where you purchased yours but I always recommend to buy the stylus direct from Dell. I have seen that people sold them on eBay as 01 or 02 but they actually were 00. 00 had the drain problem. These were returns from users getting the 01 or 02 replacements. People didn't keep the 00 packaging and put their 00 in the 01 or 02 box and sent back. On eBay it might be you get a 00 in a 01 or 02 box. Looking at the stylus you cannot see any difference.

915 Posts

June 20th, 2014 09:00

But wouldn't it be nice if Dell would ACTUALLY EXPLAIN how the stylus works, such as in a short instruction sheet? Such as, does the stylus shut down, and when?

915 Posts

June 20th, 2014 09:00

I'm not aware of a stylus sleep mode, but don't know. In my initial experimentation, I found that the pen "deactivated" in 30-60 seconds or so when the tip of the stylus was not within less than an inch or so of the tablet screen; seemingly, storing the stylus next to the tablet--such as in a stylus loop affixed to the tablet--would not keep the pen "live."

184 Posts

June 21st, 2014 09:00

I had the same with my A01 and A02.
Did you already replace the battery?
The problem with mine was that the batteries provided by Dell was I guess old and died within 4 days. Put new ones in and so far they work for a long time without problems.

17 Posts

June 21st, 2014 10:00

Approximately how long have you been using the pen with the new battery? I don't want to spend any money on these pricey AAAA cells until I'm absolutely sure that the stylus doesn't just burn through new batteries within a week. I'm not sure how old the Energizer that came with the stylus was, but it had a 2018 expiration date on it. I'm hoping the reason the battery died so fast was because it was old.

17 Posts

June 22nd, 2014 00:00

I bought the stylus from the Microsoft store, so it's got to be a genuine A02.

I've decided to hold off on buying those AAAA cells. I'm not sure if 8-10 weeks is considered long with regards to a battery-powered stylus, but I was hoping for at least three months, especially since the stylus uses these one-time-use batteries. I really wish Dell designed this to use triple-A batteries instead or with a built-in rechargeable battery.

Instead of buying the batteries, I spent the money on a QQ-tech bluetooth keyboard. I only needed the pen for use in desktop mode, and I only type in OneNote. As for the pen, I'm just going to store it away and hope for Sanyo to develop some AAAA eneloops.

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