Samsung Might Be Bringing the Stylus Back
posted Sunday Jan 29, 2012 by Jon Wurm
During CES 2012 at the Samsung booth there was a sea of familiar Galaxy devices but one that stood out in particular was the Galaxy Note. In an interview with Laptop Magazine, Samsung's product marketing manager, Ryan Bidan, said that the Galaxy Note isn't classified as a phone or tablet but has a category of it's own. It also takes advantage their "S Pen" stylus (pause for dramatic effect).
We've been pretty clear with the Galaxy Note, that we're creating an innovative new category. And it's a new category around personalized communication. You're able to use the S Pen to really interact with your device in a much more analog way than we've been able to traditionally. It's about getting back to that really tactile and personal communication method. We think there's a huge amount of value in that.
Is Samsung on to something or should we continue to refine our motor control skill with our hands and defeat the stylus naturally? Read on after the break.
The form factor for most styli is very natural to anyone who went through school and learned how to write using a pencil. We are also used to the tactile feedback that the styli returns to us and we rely on that somewhat for various types of input that does not involve a keyboard. Anyone whose ever tried to use their smartphone or tablet device as a canvas to convey an idea by using their hands has probably given up after a couple tries. However, the S Pen help reopen the lost medium of finely tuned digital drawing on today's devices. Samsung also mentioned the addition of 3D Gesture technology which could help them bring the stylus back with style.
Thinking back to the time of resistive touch screens where fingers just didn't cut it, a lot of bitter sweet memories come to mind. Losing your stylus was a pain but it did give us an excuse to jab the device a little harder than normal if it didn't do what you wanted it to. It just doesn't feel the same with today's capacitive touchscreens and your fingers so at the very least the S Pen might add a little therapeutic value to the device.
