If that microstylus just isn’t cutting it for you, then you may want to see what Samsung has been mulling over. A recently published patent reveals some interesting new tricks that Samsung may be planning to stick in their forthcoming styluses (styli?).
I don’t need to tell you that Samsung has something of a fixation on pen-based interfaces — take the pocket-sized Galaxy Note and the forthcoming Galaxy Note 10.1 for instance — so it’s intriguing to see what they think the humble stylus could be better at.
With this patent, Samsung seems to be taking a page out of Asus’s playbook — to go with their ambitious Padfone phone/tablet, the Taiwanese company introduced a capacitive stylus with a built-in transmitter and receiver meant for taking voice calls. In Samsung’s design, the both components are nestled on the back of the stylus directly opposite that pen clip. Samsung’s patent also concept takes things a bit further though by throwing NFC into the mix to simplify the pairing process between the stylus and compatible phones and tablets.
And perhaps best of all, it doesn’t appear to be the sort of accessory that only works with Samsung’s Galaxy Note series. As its depicted in the patent application, the stylus only sports a capacitive nub so while it won’t be as downright precise as the Wacom-enabled S-Pen, it’ll work just as well on an iPad as it well on a Galaxy Nexus. Whether or not Samsung’s concept will ever make it to the market is still up the air, but hey — if Asus can do it, so can they.
[via Engadget]