I post this on Microsoft support some time ago under nick name Groboto, with no answer form support:
The dial firmware use the system off mode available on nRF52832 chip inside the Surface Dial, and that is the deepest power saving mode the system can enter. When the device have entered system off mode, the only possible wakeup sources are reset, GPIO, NFC, USB or LPCOMP modules. **A wakeup from this state, will trigger a reset of the device. It is not possible to wakeup from system off mode using the RTC.
**In simple words, every time the dial go to sleep mode, the internal system is off, and have to booth when wakeup, and that is the reason make the dial take few seconds to wakeup. I cant confirm 100% this is exactly what happen, but all indicate to me it is.
The firmware need be reworked or they can increase the time probably to 20 minutes or more instead of 10.
Surface Dial support Over-the-Air Firmware Update, if they want fix this they can........ the question is...........they want?
The sad side of the history is no answer from they.
Also when I fix this, the Dial go to that power off mode and recover the control not happens in instant way so you have to deal with that.
The sleep mode itself not is wrong, not allow to user to increase that time is what is wrong, my dial have now over 1 year without replace the battery, increase just a little bit the sleep mode wont kill the batter in a radical way and make the usage more comfortable, despite any improvement I can do.