Ahead of Microsoft’s launch event on October, new documents confirmed the latest feature for the Surface family.
Thanks to Microsoft’s fillings with the FCC earlier this month, we now know that it is working on a stylus pen that includes wireless charging capabilities similar to other styli. And the obvious inference is that the upcoming Surface Pro is going to have an updated Surface Pen with this capability.
I’ve looked out the pen that came with the first Surface machines back in the day, and it was a passive unit relying on induction to calculate the tip’s location. The Surface Pen has seen a number of improvements over the years, moving to wards an active device for improved accuracy and features, but always retaining compatibility over the whole family of Surface devices.
A move towards wireless charging certainly avoids the issue of replacing the regular battery inside the pen, but it also allows for a much more power hungry device, with the designers feeling safe in the knowledge that the Surface Pen can be topped up through wireless charging.
I’m curious to see how that charging happens – the obvious answer is that this is part of the magnetic attachment to the carrying point on the side of the new Surface Pro and Surface Book designs (much like the Apple Pencil 2 on the iPad Pro), but the older hardware will not have a charging plate built in. That means a wireless charging surface pen is going to need to come with a charger for backwards compatibility, or this Surface Pen will struggle with backwards compatibility.
Microsoft is expected to launch updates to the Surface Laptopand Surface Pro machines – and the latter is perfectly suited to feature a new Surface Pen. A third-generation Surface Book may show up as could a dual-screened laptop like device.