Active Pen/Stylus (Synaptics a la Dell 750-AAGN) working on Dell Venue 8 7000!

[spacedogg]

According to a 3 page thread on xda, people have had luck using an active stylus (namely the Dell 750-AAGN stylus) with the Dell Venue 8 7000.

This is not officially advertised by Dell or even suggested to be supported on any Dell information. I have ordered a pen from Amazon to test it out.

Has anyone else had a chance to try this out?

 

[Willy_P]

Please let us know if it works for you.

 

[grandgroove]

I have! I purchased the HP Active Stylus from a local Best Buy. I don't have enough points on the forum to post URLs, so look up SKU ID 1169103.

Being left-handed and loving to take digital notes has forced me to be persnickety about tablets and the proper stylus to use. The wrist detection and all.

While this is not on the level of a Wacom brand of stylus (Galaxy Note, etc.), it's about 75% of the way there. Hell, for $50, you can't beat it. I have taken notes in Evernote, Onenote and OfficeSuite. If you don't like it, you can return it

 

[spacedogg]

Sorry I have been a little late to reply on my experiment. I have ordered the Dell Active Stylus (750-AAGN) available on Amazon for approximately $25 USD. You can read up on the reviews on Amazon and the issues reported in this Dell community support forum. (Sorry I cannot post links as I do not have enough post count).

So does the pen work with Dell Venue 8 7840? Well...it works...kinda.

There is some lag between pen stroke and before the stroke will appear on screen. Certain apps are worse than others. Sadly, OneNote Android version is so poor that it is simply unusable. Lag with LectureNotes and Squid (also known as Papyrus) is useable...but there is still some slight lag when writing fast. Autodesk Sketchbook is actually decent. However, I don't feel like the Android driver truly supports 256 levels of pressure sensitivity. It seems like it may only support 3 or 4. It usually writes bold lines and not thin lines.

The stylus uses AAAA format batteries which are troublesome and somewhat expensive to find. The problem seems to be that the stylus eats batteries on standby. After the battery has drained somewhat, the stylus has significant problems connecting with the tablet. So you need to be prepared to disconnect the battery after everytime you use the pen or buy rechargeable AAAA batteries (which is what I did) and keep or carry around fresh backups with you.

If you can deal with the battery issue, this is a surprising bonus accessory for a tablet did not say it had pen/stylus support from the factory.

 

[spacedogg]

I have figured out that the Dell stylus I had was malfunctioning as it was not going into standby mode. Therefore it was consuming about 20% of battery life per 24 hour period.

I have asked Dell to replace under warranty. The new replacement seems to be more stable. I will do more testing and confirm.

The HP Active Pen (J4R51AA#ABL) also works on this tablet. It seems to be more stable in terms of battery consumption than the Dell. The button placement is better as it higher up than the Dell so it does not interfere with your grip of the stylus. Even though it is more expensive than the Dell solution, I would recommend it.

Both the Dell Active Pen and the HP Active Pen use Synaptic technology. The Synaptics technology is a little laggy in implementation on the Dell 8 7000. This is probably why Dell does not promote this feature too heavily. I use it to take notes but I have to write slower (than normal) and more deliberately. It pales in comparison to a N-Trig or Wacom type stylus.

But it is certainly good enough for the odd notes or scribbles. Just don't expect it to replace all your notebooks.