It’s been a while since we’ve seen a stylus on mainstream touch screen devices especially in this time and age with the rapid adaptation of capacitive touchscreens, for a long time using your finger was seen appropriate and made the stylus for most part redundant if not obsolete. A phone with a stylus to me initially would have sounded like a definite miss (unless you’re a certain Japanese videogame company), but the Samsung Galaxy Note is the exact opposite.
Here’s what you need to know, the Galaxy Note is one of the latest offering from Samsungs long line of android devices, it’s got a 5”3 Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with 16M colours and 800x1280 pixels, 1GB of RAM with an option of 16GB and 32GB of internal storage. It takes 8MP stills at 3264x2448 pixels, with auto focus and flash, records at 1080p FullHD. Its android OS (Gingerbread) is powered by a whooping 1.4GHz Exynoc dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor (the same as the iPad 3) all this coupled with 4G capabilities.
So what’s up with the stylus? Well it’s not just a stylus. Affectionately dubbed the S-Pen, the Galaxy Note Stylus has been integrated with button which provides a new dimension to the way to interact with the android OS. When you hold the S-pen button down and hold the S-Pen over the screen of the Galaxy Note simultaneously it takes a screenshot, if you press the S-Pen button and swipe to the left it means back, which does coming in handy when browsing, if you swipe upwards the context menu will appear s, so you should get the idea. If you don’t, it means the S-Pen allows you to operate your phone without pressing any hardware keys, reducing wear and tear. It’s the little things that count.
A truly unique feature the Galaxy Note has that few people highlight is the ability to sketch. This may not seem like much but with its TouchWiz 4.0 powered user interface your strokes are mode defined based on the amount of pressure applied, the S-Memo also gives you an interesting amount of textures, brushes and palettes to choose from, equipping you with a mini art studio on the go. The fluid physics is good but it could be better, if it get blur and smudge support which would let you blur colours into each other for a more realistic fade, but considering it was not purpose built for that, it’s good enough.
Personally I’d spend hours doodling away on the S-Memo over playing angry birds (for the umpteenth time) any day. Couldn’t help but make a few sketches while I was with the Galaxy Note either, check out my doodles below.
It’s had to look at the Galaxy Note and fault it, some may argue that its screen is extraordinary large compared to other Smartphones in its class, but its unique and innovative design makes it definitely stand out among its peers.
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