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Ice Cream Sandwich Supports Styluses, but no Handwriting Recognition Just Yet
We all know modern smartphones and tablets are designed with finger input in mind, featuring large UI elements that are easy to press and good response from capacitive touchcreens that react to the slightest detected electrical charge.
The stylus is seen no more, except on some products like HTC Flyer and Lenovo ThinkPad tablet which employ a screen digitizer and all sorts of custom apps for drawing and even handwriting recognition (Lenovo’s business tablet).
After yesterday’s Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich features presentation it came to my attention one bit of info you might be interested in: Google has added support for stylus input with ICS. This means also that manufacturers have to add a capacitive stylus to (some of) their products or even better, add a screen digitizer that will greatly increase accuracy and response.
For now there’s no handwriting recognition, but since Google supports stylus input probably next Android versions will offer also native text input via the stylus. Right now the only interesting feature of the stylus input in ICS is the ability to detect pressure, which can make your next tablet extremely well suited for drawing, which should attract more artists towards digital slates.
So what about you, do you think stylus input on a tablet is an asset, or a struggle from a dying technology?
Stylus input is supported by Ice Cream Sandwich
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John (Ionut Popa in Romanian) is the Editor in Chief at AllTouchTablet.com. He studied Computer Science and worked in IT press since 2002. He’s now involved in his own projects. My Google+ Profile, Twitter
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I’m at Uni, and would LOVE, absolutely LOVE if the transformer prime had a digitizer, plus a better partnership and support from microsoft to incorporate Office suite(mainly OneNote) as they did for Macs. The EP121 is a dream for me if only the battery life wasn’t so dire, I would easily pay £800 for it
I wuld love a stylus. It would make photo working muc faster and easier. My dream tablet, which I am still waitng for, would have this capability, a full size usb port and awecam and a camera (good one) maybe even a phone. But I would still like the ten inch screen, I am not sue of this Android sstem as I hve never used one, so maybe I would perfer windows. GOt one out there yet that I can afford?
Stylus input is the “natural” asset for tablets, as tablets are the “natural” form factor for devices which you can write and draw on. in fact, the stylus was the natural device for mankind with which the written record and drawings were at firs invented some 5000 (?) years ago, and is was done on….clay tablets.
So the whole matter of fingering input covers no more than a if not somewhat clumsy form of swiping, tipping and moving/enlarging/miniaturizeing things around on the slate-screen. It serves only the “consuming” issue of the tablet. For any defined form of creativity and productivity that suits the tablet so perfectly well, the stylus – and then I mean the presence of a digitizer like Wacom or N-trigg- is essential. So, keep on stipulating this feature and keep asking for pen-and-touch -input tablets.