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posted by martyb on Friday February 02 2018, @12:24PM   Printer-friendly
from the mightier-than-the-sword dept.

Google and 3M are helping to produce an open specification for styluses that can be used across different touchscreen devices:

The humble pen isn't dead — or at least the stylus isn't. Because styluses remain a big piece of the mobile accessories market, Google and 3M have joined the Universal Stylus Initiative (USI), a collective that aims to create an open, non-proprietary active stylus specification. The standard will be designed for manufacturers to create and promote styluses that are compatible with various touchscreen devices, including phones and tablets.

To accomplish this, the standard uses two-way communication instead of just one. Ink color and stroke preferences are stored in the stylus, which can be taken across different devices, while up to six styluses can operate simultaneously on a single device. The USI standard supports 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity (the same pressure level as Samsung's S Pen and Microsoft's Surface Pen) and 9-axis inertial measurement to follow and track complex movements precisely.

Also at Ars Technica.


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  • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Friday February 02 2018, @02:36PM (4 children)

    by Nerdfest (80) on Friday February 02 2018, @02:36PM (#632006)

    Maybe try adding a Wacom tablet or something. They work pretty well, and you can avoid Gorilla arm syndrome.

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  • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday February 02 2018, @02:45PM (3 children)

    by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 02 2018, @02:45PM (#632010)

    That's a good idea for a desktop setup (I've used my wife's Wacom Bamboo in the past for some photo touch-ups) but it doesn't really suit my use case of a portable replacement for a laptop.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 02 2018, @03:24PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 02 2018, @03:24PM (#632016)

      my use case of a portable replacement for a laptop.

      Paper notepad beats everything. Scan later the notes if you really need it.

    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 02 2018, @04:59PM (1 child)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday February 02 2018, @04:59PM (#632054)

      What's wrong with just using a laptop? They're portable, they can be had with nice high-res screens in various sizes, they have an actual keyboard (not some sheet of rubber), or worse an on-screen keyboard, and they have more CPU power than thinner stuff. Unless you're some weakling who thinks a half-pound savings is somehow significant, there's no downside to a laptop over these other things, if you want something you can actually do real work on. (Tablets are fine if you just want to read an e-book or watch a movie or something passive like that.) And some modern laptops are truly thin and light, though you usually sacrifice serviceability for that.

      • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday February 03 2018, @10:02AM

        by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 03 2018, @10:02AM (#632445)

        A laptop is still my default option for my laptop replacement. I'm just wondering about touchscreen/stylus interfaces on laptops...