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How long do the batteries on the Surface Pro 3 pen last?

Moonsurface

Super Moderator
Staff member
Sorry so just to clarify, can the pen ink without the AAAA battery? If so, does palm rejection also work?
No it can't ink without the AAAA battery - (try it) the pen is active. without the battery it won't be active - but it's not bluetooth that transmits the inking so you can turn bluetooth off and still ink. The bluetooth is only for the pen cap button that activates onenote.
 

Aurelio

Member
No it can't ink without the AAAA battery - (try it) the pen is active. without the battery it won't be active - but it's not bluetooth that transmits the inking so you can turn bluetooth off and still ink. The bluetooth is only for the pen cap button that activates onenote.

heahaehaehaehaehae It's only for that?!!??! I'll disable the BT, I don't use that button!! aheahhea

Save more battery in both devices!
 

riggi

Member
Aside from possibly getting a bad battery from the factory, make sure that you are not storing your pen in a way that something might be putting pressure on the side buttons. If the buttons are being pressed in a bag or something, it will probably drain the battery pretty quickly.
 

Chris944

New Member
I used mine pretty heavily for about a month and my pen battery died. The supplied battery was a cheap GP battery. I have replaced it with a Duracell - I'll post again when it dies to see if there's any difference.
 

Dblkk

Member
Mine was provided with a Duracell battery, its been a little over a month and just went through my first AAAA battery. To be fair, im 'actively' using the pen for idk 4-6 hours a day mon-fri, and probably about the same on weekends as well. I carry a 2 pack of Duracell spares in my bag for it.

The 2 watch batteries under the top button, 1 didn't work since I got the pen. BB replaced them both with new ones, which the pen then worked. But ive probably clicked that button 10x tops.
 

cemian

Member
what happens when the pen batteries are dying? do you get glitches in inking and digitizer miscalibrations?? thats what i am experiencing now...no matter how many times i calibrate the pen the inking is still off...doesnt feel calibrated and certain spots are worse than others causing artifacts in inking
 

Dblkk

Member
what happens when the pen batteries are dying? do you get glitches in inking and digitizer miscalibrations?? thats what i am experiencing now...no matter how many times i calibrate the pen the inking is still off...doesnt feel calibrated and certain spots are worse than others causing artifacts in inking
That could be it, I'm not sure but sounds like it would explain your problem.
When my batteries died I noticed because palm rejection stopped working. Which I noticed immediately. Swapped out the battery, and no problems. You could always try changing battery and see if that fixes it, that's what I would do.
 

cemian

Member
ok weird....i tried calibrating again since my entire left side in portrait mode along side with camera was glitching out with the pen....i reset and deleted the calibration data and just tried it without calibration....wouldnt you know it works perfectly??? no more glitching as far as i can tell...maybe sp3 is factory calibrated some other way
 
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Dblkk

Member
that's great to hear. with so much going on with the surface (laptop internals, slim factor, two screens including digitizor, keyboard that clicks in, ect) there are so many hardware/software tweaks/issues/fixes. That's what makes a lot of this just trial and error to figure out which possibility it could be. It also makes forums like this so very 'needed' more than helpful. As I'm sure that more than one person will have the same issues, and to be able to get community support to help with this vs having to deal with Microsoft which has to use dictated pre-written one answer fixes all.
 

Chris944

New Member
I used mine pretty heavily for about a month and my pen battery died. The supplied battery was a cheap GP battery. I have replaced it with a Duracell - I'll post again when it dies to see if there's any difference.

Well, I'm back just over a month later and I'm about to replace the Duracell battery. I've just started having difficulty clicking now and then, it is a bit intermittent.
 

Moonsurface

Super Moderator
Staff member
ok weird....i tried calibrating again since my entire left side in portrait mode along side with camera was glitching out with the pen....i reset and deleted the calibration data and just tried it without calibration....wouldnt you know it works perfectly??? no more glitching as far as i can tell...maybe sp3 is factory calibrated some other way
I tried calibrating the pen as it seemd to be what people recommended to do (not that I had any problems) but it stopped the charms swipe from working (!)... so I removed the calibration data.. I'm convinced it works better without the calibration!!
 
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