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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.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Friday February 02 2018, @09:11PM (1 child)
Are our styluses going to go from Wacom's ingenious design to a battery-laden, thick, and stupid one? I wonder why Google cares so much about open hardware, but won't liberate their pixel phone hardware?
(Score: 2) by mrchew1982 on Saturday February 03 2018, @09:02AM
Because Wacom and Microsoft have teamed up to make a stupid closed standard that pretty much only works on the surface pro.
I know this because I tried to buy an active stylus for a laptop that has all of the hardware necessary, resistive touch screen and Bluetooth, but can't get them to work because it wasn't certified under wacoms or Microsoft's standards.