Apple iPad & Samsung Galaxy Note – The Great Stylus Debate

http://www.soft32.com/blog/platforms/mobile/apple-ipad-samsung-galaxy-note-the-great-stylus-debate/

by luciantodea • 14 years ago

14 23 14 years ago

Tablets and phones currently have very good passive touchscreens. The problem with using syluses (stylii?) is these touchscreens really weren't designed for them. Adding an active touchscreen would probably remediate these issues, but maybe that would make phones too big, and reduce battery life.

Active styluses pick up and refocus radiation from the screen, powered in a similar way to RFID chips. Maybe instead of providing input through the touchscreen, the stylus could have a tiny digital camera on its tip, detecting which pixel the stylus is on, and sending that info to the phone through Bluetooth or another means?

Perhaps the algorithms that handle touchscreen input are not properly calibrated to styluses, and an app or driver could make them operate more accurately?

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The best stylus experience I've used has been a Wacom dual active/passive screen on an HP tablet/laptop convertible. I had a nearly identical laptop with a passive-only touchscreen, adding the active touchscreen made all of the difference. On Windows 7 in Word, taking notes in economics and college math courses worked pretty well - I could type and take notes, then draw equations and graphs directly with the ink and review tools in Word. The use case was so valuable to me that I'm surprised nobody else did this, and other Office suites don't seem to offer anything even remotely similar.

joezydeco• 14 years ago

Styli present a smaller "meat pad" area to the projected capacitive screen so either the controller or the host driver need to be adjusted for that. Apple may have also written their drivers to reject touches that small to avoid accidental extra fingers or hovers from being detected.

If Samsung's pixelsense technology (CCD built into the LCD) takes off, then you could just have the stylus be a passive IR emitter and the thing would work with a point of any size.

ZeroGravitas• 14 years ago

The Galaxy Note stylus uses Wacom technology. I don't know if it qualifies as "active" but if you say that it makes the phones bigger and requires bigger batteries then that fits what I know about the Note.

edit: here's a video with someone using the pen from an HP/Wacom "pen-abled" touchsmart tm2 convertable tablet computer with the Galaxy Note:

http://youtu.be/IKeb3j2K4WM

Even the pencil tip eraser works.

stephengillie2• 14 years ago

Yes, that is the money!

The stylus looks exactly like the stylus from the HP tx2500 I owned. I don't actually know how large Wacom's technology is nor how much power it draws - I assumed phone manufacturers weren't including the best touchscreen technology for a good reason.

joshryandavis• 14 years ago

There is a debate? I thought it was generally accepted that styluses are icky.

efsavage• 14 years ago

Requiring a stylus for everything is certainly sub-par, but there are certainly cases where the precision of a stylus is nice.

gbog• 14 years ago

I don't even know what icky means but having Steve Jobs disliking styluses is not a reason to dismiss 5000 years off writing experience. For me the Galaxy Note is on the good tracks: allowing both.

fusiongyro2• 14 years ago

I'll never forget Steve-o in the iPhone announcement keynote saying, "Maybe we'll use a stylus. Stylus?! Yecch! No!" I mostly agree.

There are a few apps I use that benefit from styluses, such as Penultimate (and probably Paper, if I could get over their obscene pricing scheme) but the capacitive stylus I have is really lame and I hate using my finger as a pen.

danbee2• 14 years ago

I'd hardly call £5 obscene.

stcredzero• 14 years ago

compassative?

saturdaysaint• 14 years ago

Most people need a very strong incentive to use a new input method. I'm amazed at how few people bother to use the very useful and intuitive voice commands on every smartphone.

adestefan• 14 years ago

Here's the #1 problem with a stylus: I'll lose it.

moylan2• 14 years ago

i had stylus with psions and several palms and palm clones. over 10 years of use and never lost a single stylus. make a standard stylus and it becomes easy to keep a spare in your bag.

r00fus2• 14 years ago

I'll match your anecdote with mine - I lost the stylus several times (and even once the PalmIIe that some kind lady from France mailed back to me in the US after my trip - something that I would never have expected).

I hate the stylus. When I'm using it, I feel I need to "work" with it. The finger is natural and playful. Humans have been using their fingers to paint and draw long before they used brushes or pens.

A stylus is a powerful tool. To require it is folly. You have to create a platform that either ecompasses both inputs or chooses one. Simplicity would dictate the latter, and the finger is just more human.

nextparadigms• 14 years ago

You can insert the S-pen inside the Galaxy Note. Apparently some people actually want to do digital handwriting on these devices. I don't really get that myself, but it could be useful for signing documents, I guess? For drawing a stylus is obviously better, and apps like Draw Something can take advantage of that, even for casual non-artist users.

hessenwolf• 14 years ago

Graphs and equations, baby, graphs and equations.

Tichy• 14 years ago

Pencils worked well for a long time of human history, so I think they are not all bad.

Perhaps the problem comes from the phone functionality. It really is unacceptable having to find a pen to be able to answer the phone. Other than that, people have been carrying around pencils for centuries without too much of a problem.

Terretta• 14 years ago

Check out the Jot Pro for iPad. It simulates a full finger press using a disc the size of your fingertip, but the disc is clear, so visually, you're looking at the tip of a pen.

http://adonit.net/product/jot-pro/

It's fantastic with any iPad notebook app with wrist rejection. (Only downside: write in cursive otherwise it clacks.)

pfraze• 14 years ago

Make a phone that works with a finger or a pencil.

r00fus2• 14 years ago

Think about the knock-on effects of supporting two similar but different UI modes... personally, I prefer a stronger more cohesive platform with which to develop an app.

Apple iPad & Samsung Galaxy Note – The Great Stylus Debate

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